Apparently a concerted effort gamed the Hugos. Hugo Site
Vox Day (cf Vox Dei, Latin for Voice of God) is actually Theodore Beale. Google those names as well as GamerGate, Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, Castalia House, and read, before voting for the Hugos, but if you have the power to vote (you must be a member of Worldcon past or upcoming) *do not fail to vote*.
On the official Hugo Ballot, No Award is a category available to you, and that would avoid splitting the vote. The platform of Vox Day’s group is, in effect, well, this fellow said it well. This attack on the field we love should have been stopped before now. Now it’s in the hands of the Worldcon membership.
There isn’t any way to do it right now, within the rules. (This isn’t the first time there’s been ballot-box stuffing, but it is the most successful.)
There’s been considerable discussion of this at ‘Making Light’, and one commenter is working out a proposed counting system for nominations that could minimize future problems of this kind, assuming it passes in the business meetings. [Basically: if you nominate n items in a category, each one gets 1/n point, and the hindmost gets eliminated. Recount until you have five nominees (or six in case of a tie). Obviously, as things get eliminated, the fractional-point-per gets larger, but it never exceeds 1.]
I nominated a total of three nominees (none of them puppies related). As a first time nominator this whole fracas has made me rethink whether I will vote or not. On one hand I really like one of the ballot nominees, but I feel that the puppies have so devalued the Hugos that even if my nominee happens to win, I doubt that person will care, because of all the political maneuvering. What is really needed is a listing of items that are eligible for the Hugos separated out by section, and a place on the web that valid nominators can go to read shorter works, or excerpts from novels, so that the nominations themselves are on an equal footing. Once the ballot is set, voters should be able to read excerpts from all works on the ballot. This might mean that voters would have to pay more for the privilege of voting so that the authors are paid for their work as if the books had been purchased (possibly at some discounted price).
Vote. Even if you put ‘No Award’ first in most categories, vote. (There are three good novels on the ballot. I’ve read two of them already.)
I understand that there will again be some kind of reading packet with samples or the entire work, for the written stuff.
I am appalled by this whole business. I know that Ms. Cherryh has had some success with the Hugo award – I feel quite deservedly.
But now it appears that since it is being gamed it has lost its value. Kind of sad. I do not buy books simply because they have won an award but if I think it is a good book.
It shouldn’t hurt to be an author.
It can be fixed. What has to be done right now is to vote No Award (or as we used to call him —for Noah Ward–) in the afflicted categories. THat is the best reprimand the field can give, and at the convention, the membership will attend the annual meeting and vote on new rules and procedures, to assure this won’t happen again —at least so easily as this was done.
The Hugos definitely deserve to be saved, but the first thing that has to be done is to deliver a message where deserved, and to vote truly in the categories not affected; and then to go to that meeting and demand the system be amended to prevent this.
Or ‘Noa Waard’. (We’ve been told that David Gerrold has ‘Noah Ward’ as a registered screenwriting alias, so we’re not supposed to use it.)
How depressing. Really.
I had the right to vote back in 2012…I’ve since relinquished that right, and do not intend to renew that right. As far as I’m concerned, the Hugos have become so politicized, that it’s not even worth my time to sort through all of the crap that is flying out there.
I’ll pass……I am sorry that such a prestigious award has become such a bone of contention with people whining about Social Justice Warriors repressing the “rights” of upcoming authors to be on the ballots, but it seems to me that most of this whining is not because their works actually merit consideration, but because they believe that they’re being repressed and prevented from even appearing on the ballots. Never mind that their work is pretty mundane, and really doesn’t deserve a Hugo……but, whiners will whine….
Actually, the center of the matter is one person or very small group, and the others are simply humming his tune. Most of the yatterers have no clue what they’ve fallen into, and they’ve at least sipped the Koolaid, but are now realize it’s a bad idea. Many are now trying to pull their statements off the internet and to clean up the nastiness—now that they realize they’re in danger of being branded with a label that’s proving nastier and nastier as this fellow gets more confident.
The rest of the honest writers nominated this year deserve respect and sympathy: they’re in a terrible spot, after working very hard to do good work. The rules need to be fixed so this won’t happen again.
Elizabeth Bear has addressed this issue on her blog as well. Apparently there are a great deal of shenanigans afoot this year, which saddens me because I had looked forward to voting for the first time. I’ve looked over the nominees once and can’t remember who was nominated now. I’d certainly never vote for a slate, which if I understand correctly is what the Sad Puppies want us to do.
Read the list of nominees: I’ve given the link above. If the publisher is Castalia House, which is ‘Vox Day’s’ house, that’s a puppy from the slate. The novels I believe are unaffected.
In fact, a couple of the novel nominees were from one or both of the Pup slates. One of them has since withdrawn, allowing Hugo administrators to add the first runner-up nominee, the widely praised Chinese novel The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu.
This has been a terrible thing for several of those nominated on the Pup slates, who did not realize the full implications ahead of time (and who in a few cases were never contacted). Three have withdrawn so far.
Blogger Deirdre Saoirse Moen has a “Puppy Free” nominee listing at http://deirdre.net/the-puppy-free-hugo-award-voters-guide/
I’ve found this whole issue rather distressing, which is probably part of what these cretins wanted to achieve. I’ll be voting no award for the first time ever which saddens me but seems the only option available under the current situation.
I find it faintly amusing, and somewhat disconcerting, that Mr. Beale would exhort his “followers” to express their freedoms of choice and vote exclusively and without deviation for the slate HE has proposed.
There is a supreme arrogance when a publisher tells readers that HE is the best candidate for certain categories of awards, in this case, Best Editor Long Form….
Then there is his choice of pseudonym, “Vox Day”, in which he claims to be inspired by some deity, obviously MALE, WHITE, EUROPEAN, and who has a low tolerance for any thought not totally in line with the dogma he spews. Sorry, I know what I like in Science Fiction, and what I don’t like. I know that there are subjects with which I am uncomfortable, but I do not reject the works based on those subjects. (Comparison: I find it harder to read Jane’s books than I do CJ’s books.)
I’ve been reading Scalzi’s blog on the Sad Puppies, although he hadn’t mentioned, except in passing, the Rabid Puppies. He’s been dealing with them pretty much the same way the author of the article you linked deals with them. Perhaps the less attention given to them, the better, but right now, they seem to be pretty strident. Totally ignoring them, though, would be fatal, in that if not addressed, their followers will grow, as there are no opposing viewpoints that are presented, and so people will believe what they hear/read, etc., as if it were truth, even though they have only heard one side of the story. (I know how that works, I’ve lost several friends because they believed something but didn’t bother to ask me for my side of the story – their loss)
All in all, not being a member of WorldCon, I have no vote, but I can see even in the excerpts from Beale and John C. Wright’s interviews, writings, etc., that they are NOT what I would want listed in the award winners ever, in any category, unless it were the category of pure unadulterated crap.
Supporting membership gets you a vote. It’s $40 this year.
PC Salomon has asked to post another perspective, from George RR Martin: George is an old friend, and a very smart man. I’ll be interested to have his take as well.
Thank you, ma’am. Here’s the comment I ran past you (very slightly edited):
Philip Sandifer’s post is short, but (from the perspective of a fan sympathetic to the Sad Puppies) is flawed in ways I’d rather not bring up here on Wave Without a Shore. A longer discussion, fairer but still quite opposed to SP’s intent and tactics, can be found at George R. R. Martin’s Not a Blog in a series of posts beginning with “Puppygate”. See particularly “What Now?” where he discusses the “No Award” option.
I will be bowing out of further discussion on this topic here at Wave Without a Shore. Look for my comments on other posts on other topics.
I’ve been following this in far too much detail … it’s like a slow-motion trainwreck. I had a couple of friends with things eligible for nominations this year. Our own hautdesert was, thank goodness, unassailable, but my other friend’s shorter work eligible was completely knocked out. Who knows if that story would have made it; still, it gives me an extra jolt of outrage.
Wow, Sandifer’s blog essay was an astounding (and loooonnng) erudite, ranting, informative, name-calling, wide-ranging, funny read with, for the most part, equally intelligent comments. I was tangentially aware of what was going on with the Hugo’s from a short Boston Globe opinion piece on the issue and the targeting of a local game designer at Pax East by Gamergate or whatever they call themselves.
Thanks for posting the link!
I also then went and read Martin’s much more reasonably presented comments and analysis that J.C. Solomon posted: I appreciated his more reasonable, straight-forward comments though very different from Sandifer’s tour de force writing. Thanks for that link too.
This string of tweets from BoingBoing proposes new awards for the juvenile canines:
http://boingboing.net/2015/04/25/new-hugo-award-categories-for.html
I believe the original genius behind the tweets was author Jim C. Hines (Libriomancer, etc.), although many others have run with it since then. The fact that Popehat got involved gives the whole thing a wonderful “when worlds collide” feel: Popehat is a law blog!
Heard about…puppygate, over on the Whatever. had to Google Vox Day, never heard of him til i started reading blogs on the whole hugo thing
The best thing I’ve heard about his writing is that it makes ‘Eye of Argon’ look good.
He’s not Eye of Argon bad; he’s just … dull. I tried his piece from last year’s Hugos and put it down on the third page because nothing was happening except angsting over scenery.
This scuffle won’t kill the Hugos. It’s nasty and annoying and some of the categories are … sparse for choice, but it won’t kill them. There are too many people who want them to succeed; a wrecker like Day can’t damage them beyond repair if those people VOTE otherwise.
Judging from what the Correia/Torgersen/Day crowd is saying, this year and next year will be fraught with Drama ™, but it will pass. I dunno about you, but I’m planning on attending the business meeting at Sasquan so that 2017 can’t get hijacked this way.
Until then, though … SIGH. Young men and their anger management issues. Cheeze whiz!
I was up late reading both recommended items, tho having no vote and no cash to spend on obtaining said vote, and was pretty appalled. I did think to myself, before Sandifer mentioned it, that at least the guy was setting his domination sights on something relatively harmless, like an award, rather than kicking in the heads of his local shopkeepers. Some of his associates simply seem like narcissistic blowhards who are deluded about the quality of their writing, but the main guy, the self-styled Voice of God (really? dude, c’mon) seems like a very unpleasant person.
Then, via the mysterious connections of the internet, I found myself reviewing the EXTREMELY appalling mess that is Requires Hate, and was up until dawn, when the power gave out on my iPad, reading about the genuine damage this (woman?) has inflicted on people since, apparently, 2001.
Now Beale just seems like an angry little man screaming from the corner that the world isn’t fair and how he’ll show everyone. Unpleasant and infuriating, yes, and those who really deserved a Hugo and now won’t get one definitely have my sympathy, but ultimately, Vox Dei is going to find himself either out-maneuvered or ignored, again, (which will be so much worse from his perspective), and will largely vanish from the collective consciousness.
Requires Hate, on the other hand, really should be prosecuted in a court of law. Thank you, CJ, for supporting a community of SFF fans in a pleasant, No Trolls/Sociopaths Allowed environment. For those who haven’t stumbled upon the Requires Hate thing yet, be forewarned if you go looking…it’s pretty vile. It makes Beale look like a puppy indeed. I need a nice soothing brain bath. But I’m glad I’ve now heard about it, because amyone who finds themselves victimized by someone like that needs all the support they can get, rather than having everyone bow out in silent horror and leave the floor to the abuser. I don’t often see trolls – there are very few forums I read, specifically because of them – but it helps if people call them out when they see them.
Tea. I need a nice cup of tea.