Hugo awards came in - no success for the Sad/Rabid Puppies

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**MWHistorian**

Bookwrack wrote:
There's not much too it. A few years ago, Larry Corriea lost out on the Campbell award (best first work from an author and awarded at the same annual con as the Hugo). At the time, he was gracious and said it was an honor just to be considered, and that he lost out to worthy company.

Latter on his story changed that that was just the false face he put on because people had made comments to him that he had lost not because of superior competition, but because he was white, conservative, and male and those were strikes against him. He started positing that there was a small, focused, SJW cabal exerting undue control over the direction of the genre and what books got awards (and this is the first and foremost failing of the puppies, because just looking at the easily verifiable list of books that got nominations and awards in previous years puts lie to the his claims) and organized the first Sad Puppies to try and combat them.

It was only a small thing, but this year, for Sad Puppies 2, he worked with another author of similar views, Brad Torgersen, along with a third author, Vox Day (Theodore Beale). Teddy, unfortunately, is not a very nice person. Corriea said that if he and BRad wer 'FDR and Churchill, then Teddy was Stalin." Teddy organized a second group, called 'the Rabid Puppies,' and pushed much harder to get people to vote in lockstep for a voting slate, getting people to all push the exact same choices across the entries for each category.

The Hugos are a two-step process. First you get the nominations by popular vote of the top five choices, and then you have the vote on them at the annual Worldcon. All things considered, the voting pool is/was rather small. There were a couple categories where the puppies' slate filled all the slots. That was when people sat up and took notice of what was happening, and things started exploding all over the internet.

Now we just had the actual awards themselves, and like I said before, it sums things up pretty well that before Torgersen was saying, 'vote for what you like, and we'll see how it all turns out,' and now he's throwing temper tantrums over the results.

That was a very ignorant summary.

**.Mikes.**

It was a very accurate summary.

**MWHistorian**

.Mikes. wrote:
It was a very accurate summary.

I personally know Larry and Brad and you're way off the mark with their motivations and behavior.

**LordofHats**

.Mikes. wrote:
It was a very accurate summary.

No brah you don't get it. The SJWs have taken over our Scifi awards! it is our responsibility as "true fans" to tell them that we won't tolerate their opinions! We like our trashy low brow science fiction, and we ain't gonna let de womeniz and the Chinese take over!

**.Mikes.**

If you personally know Larry and Brad could you please urge them to recognise the 'popular vote' they claimed to stand for just slapped them down hard and if they had any integrity they'd lay off trying to pull this kind of stunt again?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

LordofHats wrote:
we ain't gonna let de womeniz and the Chinese take over!

This is auto-correcting for me to 'dark eldar womeniz'. Damn, I didn't realise it had gotten that bad.

**VorpalBunny74**

LordofHats wrote:
We like our trashy low brow science fiction, and we ain't gonna let de womeniz and the Chinese take over!

Wasn't Toni Weisskopf denied an award because of the anti-puppy vote?

**LordofHats**

VorpalBunny74 wrote:
LordofHats wrote:
We like our trashy low brow science fiction, and we ain't gonna let de womeniz and the Chinese take over!
Wasn't Toni Weisskopf denied an award because of the anti-puppy vote?

Shelia Gilbert and Anne Sowards as well (all in the same category). And John C Wright was nominated 3 times in the same category? Crazy stuff right?

It's almost like the whole thing is a giant mess and I'm being facetious

EDIT: Granted, my crack was directed at the crowd behind Sad Puppies, not the people who actually organize the slate (Torgersen), who I think is at best described as being somewhat misguided.

**Bookwrack**

MWHistorian wrote:
.Mikes. wrote:
It was a very accurate summary.

I personally know Larry and Brad and you're way off the mark with their motivations and behavior.

Whatever you say, man.

The truth hurts, don't it? I mean, we can go right over to Brad's blog right now and see where along with his well reasoned summation of the Hugo results, you had a streak where every comment that disagreed with him had him re-write your comment to say, "You made us do it!"

That's the saddest thing about the puppies is EVERYTHING they've done is preserved in the public record for anyone to read and confirm. Like Correia and Martin's exchanges.

*edit*
I'm going to have to look for the link because I don't remember the name, but you had Brad working up outrage about one of the writer's who declined their nomination being 'bullied and harassed' until she withdrew, only to have her immediately tell him not to speak for her, and no, she hadn't been.

*edit 2*
-cooled it on some of the hyperbole-

**.Mikes.**

http://crimeandtheforcesofevil.com/blog/2015/05/sad-puppy-brad-torgensen-lies-like-crazy-and-juliette-wade-calls-him-on-it/

I believe you're referring to Juliet Wade, whom Torgersen started making up stories about after she asked to have her name removed from the slate.

**Seaward**

The only way to see who's "winning"/has "won" is to look at sales numbers, I think. Are the "genderfluid socialists fighting oppressive reactionaries with empathy guns as they forge communist utopias" novels selling more than the "grizzled white men playing into stereotypical Western male power fantasies in spaaaaaace" ones?

**VorpalBunny74**

LordofHats wrote:
It's almost like the whole thing is a giant mess and I'm being facetious

No problem - I just don't know who's ribbing who now. It's a mystery wrapped in an enema

**LordofHats**

Well I think that's a bit unavoidable. Sad Puppies really is a lot like Gamer Gate in that is sucked in a very large number of people trying to achieve different things.

About the only thing that can probably be definitively taken away is that Sad Puppies failed to achieve its goals. Despite getting much of its slate on the final ballot, for whatever reasons the rest of World Con was so upset with them that they outright refused to give awards out when their only choices were those pushed by Puppies. If that isn't a statement ultimately condemning Puppies by the majority in rather harsh terms, I'm not really sure what else it can be taken as.

**.Mikes.**

Seaward wrote:
The only way to see who's "winning"/has "won" is to look at sales numbers, I think. Are the "genderfluid socialists fighting oppressive reactionaries with empathy guns as they forge communist utopias" novels selling more than the "grizzled white men playing into stereotypical Western male power fantasies in spaaaaaace" ones?

I'm not one of those people who claim a winner is someone who sells more books, but in this case, yes you're correct. Also, when an SP tried to organise a boycott of Tor-published books, Tor books actually increased.

**Bromsy**

The whole editor section is a mess and the part I really don't understand.

Bookwrack wrote:
Everyone I know who got the Hugo packet and read it agreed that the while some of the puppy works were serviceable, they were vastly inferior to what they forced off the list in the categories they stuffed the ballot box on.

I think it really says everything about the whole situation you need to know that lead puppy Brad Torgerson has gone from genially stating, 'vote the way you want, and whatever happens, it's all good,' to petulantly editing every disagreeing post on his blog to, 'You made us do this!' Yep, there's an open mind who just wants to show his true love of the genre for you.

I know that the new rules they're proposing for 2017 are going to kill slates of any sort dead. It'll be fun to see if the puppies have any life left in them and try again at that point.

Bromsy wrote:
Do any of you really think that the people who voted 'no award' actually read any of the stuff they were voting against?

I wish there was a way to accurately gauge that data, because I'm betting no.

That's a fair question, but an even better one is, 'how many of the puppies read what they voted against? How many of them actually read what they voted _for_?'

That actually isn't a better question. At best it would be equivalent, but I am still fairly certain that since in many cases the 'no award' received multiple times what the next entry got in terms of votes you are looking at a situation where the 'puppies' received a whole lot of nominations and they all voted for the ones they liked best, and other people came along and voted no award as a matter of course - otherwise you would not be seeing results where the second place got more votes than the winner in previous years and yet still lost by an order of magnitude to no award.

The nomination and awards processes are distinct - to nominate you do not have to vote 'against' anything. If you are questioning whether people read the things they voted for in the actual awards, I would posit that since basically the puppies spread their votes for all of the nominees in quite a few categories and lost to no award, the puppies were far more inclined to vote for those out of the five that they had read and liked, whereas everyone opposed to the puppies were motivated to vote no award regardless of the quality of the entries that the puppies were far more likely to have actually read the nominees.

**Kilkrazy**

Do the results give us the spread of votes?

**Bromsy**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Do the results give us the spread of votes?

http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf/2015HugoStatistics.pdf

**LordofHats**

I'd posit that in most of the categories, the people voting probably have read the pieces or are aware of the persons. Very few places publish Novelettes or Short Stories, and most of the categories that are not 'Best novel' are the kind of mediums where the people bothering to vote in them at all, are probably fairly aware of what is in the field. So for most of the categories, if a voter is aware of any piece that might qualify they're probably familiar with most of the others due to limited venues/time investment.

The only area where I'd feel confident saying people probably vote without having read all the nominees is Novels and Long Form.

**cincydooley**

LordofHats wrote:
I'd posit that in most of the categories, the people voting probably have read the pieces or are aware of the persons. Very few places publish Novelettes or Short Stories, and most of the categories that are not 'Best novel' are the kind of mediums where the people bothering to vote in them at all, are probably fairly aware of what is in the field. So for most of the categories, if a voter is aware of any piece that might qualify they're probably familiar with most of the others due to limited venues/time investment.

The only area where I'd feel confident saying people probably vote without having read all the nominees is Novels and Long Form.

So you're saying best Novelette isn't treated in the Hugo's the way I treat best sound editing or best foreign language short film on my Oscar ballots?

**LordofHats**

Pretty much. It's just not a widely published medium. On top of that, most of those works are short enough that you'd be able to read the entire thing in an afternoon (not to mention, there aren't many authors writing in those genre's either).

**Kilkrazy**

Bromsy wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Do the results give us the spread of votes?

http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf/2015HugoStatistics.pdf

Thanks.

Judging by that , the No Award votes ranged widely from the lowest to the highest single vote in different categories.

**Chongara**

I've been seeing this story everywhere and man it's dense and confusing. Even after reading this whole thread I'm still not sure I understand exactly what's going on with it. Is this understanding roughly accurate?

-Big awards ceremony for nerd books.
-Tastes of nerd book crowd begin to shift a bit, at start picking a lot of books with gay/minority/whatever characters in them.
-Some authors & fans take offense that their tastes aren't in the majority anymore, and start getting angry and blaming "SJWs" for ruining everything.
-Said angry people form groups to stack the popularity stage of the nominations by pulling in lots of votes from outside the usual community.
-In protest judges enter null votes in any category where it seems as though the votes were manipulated by the angry crowd, meaning few awards actually given out.

**.Mikes.**

Mostly accurate, but the 'judges' here are anyone who bought a voting membership of world con. There's no select cabal of judges who make their decisions behind closed doors.

**Hulksmash**

I like Flint's view on it. Granted I like Flint's books for the most part so I'm probably biased. Plus it alludes to what might be the next Heir to Alexandria series book

Just treat the Hugo's like any other award and forget about it.

**Bookwrack**

Chongara wrote:
-In protest judges enter null votes in any category where it seems as though the votes were manipulated by the angry crowd, meaning few awards actually given out.

There actually are no judges. It's all driven by fan voting. You just have to spend the $40 to purchase a World Science Fiction Society membership to be able to vote, and the rules for what's eligible are pretty broad. To qualify, your book has to be published in the previous year. There are no guidelines for what determines if something is sci-fi or fantasy and the five title nomination list come straight from the voting. It also gets you a copy of the Hugo nominated works to review. When Robert Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' series was completed it got nominated for a Hugo, and the nomination packet contained the whole series. Pretty good deal for $40!

It's probably no big surprise that the membership and voting pool tended to be fairly small, and this is how the puppies had their early success. For each category, you could pick 1-5 titles to nominate. Some voters were dedicated and made sure to fill each slot on their ballots. Others just voted for the best novel and ignored the rest. Against that, just getting a small group of people to vote the same five entries allowed the puppies to steamroll some of the initial nominations, and those were the ones that got hit with the No Award choice.

Which when it came to the final voting, was not some omg you can't do that! thing. If you thought that Dance with Dragons was the best god damned book of 2012, and everything else was garbage, making that your top pic and No Award your #2 entry was just fine. If a lot of other people agreed with you, aDwD would come in #1, and No Award would be somewhere below it. It'd all come down to the fan votes cast at World Con.

Which also might answer the above questions about how many people read the works they voted no award for. Because if you cast a vote, you got the packet and had the chance to read the works.

**sebster**

Piston Honda wrote:
So, stories written by kotaku and upworthy bloggers?

See how a few different people gave you summaries, and you picked out the one that sounded like it most closely suited your own culture war beliefs, and then exaggerated it even further? That's what this is about. People with pre-loaded political ideas charging in with absolutely no fething interest in the reality on the ground, all primed to fight another round in the insufferably stupid culture war.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

MWHistorian wrote:
.Mikes. wrote:
It was a very accurate summary.

I personally know Larry and Brad and you're way off the mark with their motivations and behavior.

You may possibly know every single person on Earth. I am impressed.

**hotsauceman1**

That one mentioned where a chinese man comes out to his traditional parents sounds so stupid. There is no reason that has to be a science fiction where wat.er falls on your head if you lie

**VorpalBunny74**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
That one mentioned where a chinese man comes out to his traditional parents sounds so stupid. There is no reason that has to be a science fiction where wat.er falls on your head if you lie

According to their website:

While the World Science Fiction Society sponsors the Hugos, they are not limited to sf. Works of fantasy or horror are eligible if the members of the Worldcon think they are eligible.

I haven't read that water falling story though, so there could be a shocking Science Fiction twist at the end

Spoiler:

**LordofHats**

The Hugo Award is better described as a Speculative Fiction award, rather than a science fiction award (despite Science Fiction being what the award is best known for). Lots of Fantasy works have won it over the years (Sandman, American Gods, Harry Potter).

**Aszubaruzah Surn**

I like how none of the novels recommended by Atomic Rockets site ever got a Hugo award, especially a gem like Human Reach series.

Or the Atomic Rockets site itself.

I guess science in science fiction no longer counts.

**Agent_Tremolo**

Aszubaruzah Surn wrote:
I like how none of the novels recommended by Atomic Rockets site ever got a Hugo award, especially a gem like Human Reach series.

Or the Atomic Rockets site itself.

I feel bad for Ken Burnside, actually. Even if "the cold equations" doesn't hold much literary value in itself, it is a must read for anyone interested in writing a realistic depiction of space warfare. Sadly, he messed up big time with a couple of untimely comments at Nielsen-Hayden's blog and got immediately lumped with the puppy hardliners.

Heck, for the sake of sci-fi, I wish he'd kept his head down. He was probably the only Puppy nominee who deserved a win IMHO.