Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
As a youth, I looked for Science Fiction books with Hugo Winner on the cover because that was a sign of quality science fiction writing.
For the last 30 years, Hugo winners have been more about political correctness than starships and laser beams, a future of despair, not hope. Look, I read escapist fiction to escape political correctness and despair, I don’t want it in my Science Fiction so I quit buying SF.
Three years ago, author Larry Correia noticed the trend and in a parody of typical politically-correct appeals, claimed that boring message fiction was the leading cause of puppy-related sadness. He said the Hugos put authors’ politics above the quality of the work, that conservatives were shunned. He formed the Sad Puppies club and got a few conservatives nominated for the award. The Liberal response was typical: Sad Puppies are racist, sexist and homophobic and must be shunned. SP did it again last year and the response got worse. This year there were two groups: Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, who swept the nominations and then the fur really flew.
The major media reporting on the controversy started from the wrong premise: they examined genitals and scrutinized skin color to see if Sad Puppies nominees filled quotas of women and racial minority authors. That investigation entirely misses the point: regardless of who wrote the stories, were the stories any good?
The metric used to measure the problem, IS the problem.
The 2015 Hugos were announced: no Award won several categories. Politically correct fans would sooner give no award at all than let conservative nominees win, not even the woman, Hispanic or American Indian Sad Puppies nominees. Politics ruled; Liberals burned down their politically correct village in order to save it.
The insanity goes beyond science fiction.
President Obama nominated Sotomayor to the Supreme Court because she was a “wise Latina.” Is there something about being a woman that makes the Commerce Clause easier to understand? Some special cultural benefit of having Spanish ancestors that gives you clearer insight into the Due Process Clause? Liberals insist Diversity is Essential but never provide an intellectual justification for it.
We can see the results of Affirmative Action in the Hugos and in the White House. When will we, as a society, get the message that rewarding the least qualified and punishing the most qualified on the basis of immaterial factors such as race and sex . . . is a stupid way to run a society?
Joe Doakes
I’m happy that Joe can explain the flap about the Hugo Awards because I, myself, have never cared for sci-fi.
And when I say “sci-fi”, I mean “sci-fi fans”, of whom I have the grossly-unfair stereotype of being a roomful of people who look and act like Comic Store Guy on Simpsons…
…and who justify the stereotype, in part, by doing such a terrible job (Joe Doakes excepted) of explaining why we should care? Reading sci-fi fans’ “explanations” of the Hugo Award flap is like reading about “Gamergate”; clogged with subcultural jargon that, like all subcultural argot, is intended to make the subculture opaque to outsiders.
And it works! What is a “sad puppy?” (Joe explains it adequately, in context, which is a first). What in the f*****g f*****g f*** is “Dragoncon?” Who is who, and how do we know, and for the love of The Force, why does it matter?
So it’s a start. Thanks, Joe.
You’re right, Mitch, the Hugo Awards is a tempest in a teapot full of inside baseball. There is an application to the wider world but it’s hard to see without clarifying the players:
Sad Puppies: authors who incline toward conservatism in their personal lives.
Rabid Puppies: authors who incline toward libertarian-ism in their personal lives.
SJW (Social Justice Warriors): people who incline toward Liberal Democrat politics in their personal lives, and insist that everyone else must do so, as well.
A bunch of SJWs got on the committee to decide which book won The Best Book Award aka Hugo. For the last 20 years, they’ve systematically and intentionally excluded authors who were not Liberal Democrats.
It’s like the IRS targeting conservative fund-raising groups but passing liberals right through.
It’s like seizing wood from Gibson guitars (contributes to Republicans) but passing the identical wood belonging to Martin guitars (Democrat contributor).
It’s like obtaining phony indictments against Republican candidates before elections to make headlines and sway voters; like prosecuting Dinesh D’Souza for campaign finance violations (Republican contributor) but appointing Jane Hartley Ambassador to France (Democrat bundler); like going after Christian bakers but leaving alone Muslim bakers who won’t bake gay wedding cakes.
It’s like the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is useless.
Sad Puppies are The Resistance.
It’s like Bill Gleason panning Trulbrt! without reading it. He doesn’t NEED to read it. The quality of the story doesn’t matter, the author’s politic are all that matter. You hold the wrong politics, your book sucks. QED.
Woman quota….I see an applicant for a coaching job at Iowa is suing due to gender discrimination. He said he was turned down for the job because he is a man. His evidence? As flimsy as it is, consists primarily of an internal Iowa email that says “only hire a woman for this position”, do not hire any males.
Minnesota-Duluth did that a few years ago when hiring a new chancellor, but no one had the balls to sue them for it.
The puppies thought that SF was apart from politics. They are about to find out how sensitive publishers are to charges of racism and sexism, whether the charges are true or not. I wonder how many of the puppies cheered as the media demonized conservatives like Palin and Bachmann?
I was in a Barns and Nobles the other day. It is getting difficult to find a book written in the past 10 years that is not written by a woman. At least in that store.
Ya know what’s hard to find within the genre is a novel that is complete within its covers, begining, middle, end. And not part of a trilogy, quadrilogy, infinite series.
I understand the ecconomics, but that’s what I want.
So how long before 7-time Hugo winner Robert Heinlein gets the Jefferson Davis treatment from the judging committee, and his awards are sent down the memory hole? Perhaps he should have written, “Political Correctness is a Harsh Mistress.”
“Ya know what’s hard to find within the genre is a novel that is complete within its covers, beginning, middle, end.”
buy and read Trulbert!: A Comic Novella About the End of the World As We Know It
Joe does a real good job paring it down to the essentials. One of the “leaders” of the Sad Puppies is Sarah Hoyt, a female, immigrant (I forget whether Portugese or Spanish). But the Sad puppies are, according to the SJW, anti-woman, anti-persons of non-WASP heritage.
Dragoncon is a convention, centered around gaming: board games, dungeon and dragons type dice games, miniature gaming. Since most of those genre’s are science fiction and fantasy based, then the reading of novels in those areas also apply.
At least that is what I gather. I have never attended.
They didn’t award some catagories because they claim the Sad Puppies “cheated”:
http://www.dailydot.com/geek/hugo-award-nominees-sad-puppies/
I’m a lifelong sci-fi and fantasy fan but don’t really follow awards closely (all I know about the Hugos is that Lord of the Rings beat the Foundation series when they were up for it the same year and they’re both of two of my favorites). I couldn’t tell you if sci fi has veered more towards the left in recent years although that seems to be the direction that fantasy has gone as it seems that more and more shelf space is filled with paranormal romance which is rife with identity politics.
For those who enjoy something a bit more cerebral and less-PC, I’d recommend trying the stuff published by Baen books. They tend to be more in the military and hard sci fi realm and while they have quite a few authors that lean conservative and libertarian, they’re not particularly political. Also they make a lot of their books available for *free* online with the permission of the authors.
http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx
kel, this could start a real argument – is Trubert science fiction?
An argument against the proposition would be the author’s own words:
” I, myself, have never cared for sci-fi.”
DMA, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, the author of the article you linked to, doesn’t actually say Sad Puppies cheated, for the very good reason that they didn’t. Any paid member can nominate works, slates have existed for decades, log-rolling is accepted practice and several of the most prominent Anti-Puppies (Puppy Kickers, if you like) concede they got out-hustled in the nomination phase so their only option was to refuse to give awards to the nominees.
It’s a variation on the “Now look what you made me do” excuse used by wife-beaters everwhere.
Joe, I don’t think they did either. The article is a good introduction to the matter for the uninformed.
Dragoncon is popular with the Fantasy crowd, though John Ringo, and possibly Mike Z Williamson (both Mil/SF writers) are regulars. Lots of sharp pointy things. May I suggest to you Mitch that you check out Larry’s Grimmnor books. Alt-History/Urban Fantasy (Spoiler Alert FDR’s racist streak is featured along with John M. Browning). If you wish to meet Mr. Corriea (highly recommended) he will be at Uncle Hugo’s in October for the release of his next book. (He comes back to Uncle Hugo’s for every new book, since they sent his first self published book to Baen cause it kept selling out) Larry is also a big gun rights supporter and even gone toe to toe with the folks on CNN.
The old guard SF writers were hardscrabble pulp writers and editors who basically invented the genre. Most writers get started writing short stories, and at some point — in the 80s, I guess — the people publishing short stories began to trend strongly female and make academic. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
The real change came on the 60s with the so-called “New Wave” SF writers. If you want to see real contempt expressed for the common man, check out Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman ” (1965).
I haven’t read much SF since the 90s, but that said, Scalzi is a puppy-kicker. Can’t stand his stuff. Connie Willis is a puppy-kicker. Love her stuff. Robert Reed is good. Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun tetralogy (1980-1983) is a wonder. Vernor Vinge and Greg Bear write good, solid, thought provoking hard SF.
PB, got to disagree about Repent. I always took it for a short story version of 1984, the state crushing the individual. And while Harlan is a card carrying liberal democrat, he is very much about “getting Paid” (as Corriea puts it). Scalzi is a putz, but “Old Mans War” isn’t that bad if you consider it against all the tween/YA stuff that gets published. Something to read on the airplane, that you don’t have to think about (and shouldn’t) and don’t care if you lose.
In Repent, the only unhappy person seems to be the Harlequin. Ever notice that he only attacks common people? And always from above? It was the Harlequin’s opinion that peoples’ lives were incomplete and needed to be shaken up by him, not their own. The world of Repent was a world where everyone had a job, enough to eat, and a roof over his or her head. The price they paid was a rather benign conformity. This bothered the Harlequin more than it bothered anyone else.
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