Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
In my youth, readers of science fiction books knew \u201cHugo Award\u201d on the cover meant \u201cGood Book;\u201d but over the last 30 years or so, it\u2019s come to mean \u201cPolitically Correct Book\u201d in which politically correct characters express politically correct opinions only slightly related to science fiction.\u00a0 Look, the reason I read escapist literature is to escape the relentless political correctness of modern life, I don\u2019t want it in my science fiction.\u00a0 Others must agree: sales of science fiction books have plummeted.<\/p>\n
Science fiction writer Larry Correia (author of the awesome Monster Hunter, International series) made fun of the trend, saying \u201cBoring message fiction is the leading cause of puppy-related sadness.\u201d\u00a0 He claimed conservative authors and conservative opinions were ruthlessly supressed by the SF publishing industry.\u00a0\u00a0A group of writers calling themselves \u201cSad Puppies\u201d urged science fiction readers to nominate stories for the Hugo award based on character, plot, action, and writing, not the sex or color of the writer or the political correctness of the story.\u00a0 It turned into a massive brawl between the Establishment Gatekeepers Protecting Cronies and the Insurrectionist Outsiders Seeking Change (oddly like this year\u2019s Presidential primaries).<\/p>\n
Science fiction writer Dave Freeer commenting at website Mad Genius Club about this year\u2019s Hugo award nominations:<\/p>\n
\u201c. . . my support for World Con and the Hugos is rather like one\u2019s support for cousin Hugo who has turned into a hopeless drunk, in the process of losing everything because of his life choices. You remember him as a nice guy, once. Funny, compassionate, full of promise and potential, rather than the vicious drunk and petty thief he is now. For the sake of what he once was, you still try and help him, even though you know it\u2019s probably fruitless and he\u2019ll probably steal from you too. But eventually, you just have to walk away, because he has to want to change. And I\u2019m not seeing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yep.\u00a0 Sounds right to me, in both Hugo nominations and Presidential primaries. If Bernie and Trump get shafted at the convention by the Establishment Gatekeepers, I suspect an awful lot of Americans will give up and walk away.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And from more than just sci-fi and politics.<\/p>\n
But more on that later today and\/or next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: In my youth, readers of science fiction books knew \u201cHugo Award\u201d on the cover meant \u201cGood Book;\u201d but over the last 30 years or so, it\u2019s come to mean \u201cPolitically Correct Book\u201d in which politically correct characters express politically correct opinions only slightly related to science fiction.\u00a0 Look, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58115,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58114\/revisions\/58115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}