Well, that happened.
And we should make no mistake what it means, and what it doesn’t mean.
It doesn’t mean that the Hugos no longer have any room for just-plain-meat-and-potatoes fun science fiction and fantasy.
That kind of material has won plenty of Hugos and will win Hugos again.
It doesn’t mean the Hugos no longer have room for conservative authors.
Conservative authors have won plenty of Hugos before and will win Hugos again.
It doesn’t mean that a SJW cabal wants to keep the Hugos away from Christian white men.
Christian white men have won Hugos before and will win Hugos again.
It doesn’t mean that the Hugo voters repudiated the nominees.
There were plenty of nominees who left the ceremony empty-handed and someday won’t.
Rajnar Vajra, Kary English, Arlan Andrews, Toni Weiskopf, even I am forced to say, John C. Wright…they are not going to disappear forever just because Hugo voters rejected the Puppy slates. There are a couple of names who might be in danger of disappearing sooner rather than later because their behavior has been beyond the pale, including one who has acknowledged it — but that won’t be just because the puppies nominated them. They made whatever beds they lie in. And those that did themselves damage instead of honor might effect repairs with self-correction. Lou Antonelli has said he has some distance to travel. I am not going to be the one who tells him I hope he can’t travel it. I wish him luck.
The slates contained plenty of people who might get a Hugo someday, and among them some who should; some indeed, like Mike Resnick, who have and will again.
Nobody’s career was ruined last night. Nobody’s life was ruined last night. The books are still there. For those who write them, the readers are still there.
It also needs to be said that not everybody supported by the Puppies wore their support with particular pride, and among them are folks like Vajra and English who came out and said, “I’m not actually with these people.” For those who sat in that audience, it honestly had to hurt when cheers greeted the news that their category had gone to “No Award.” I want them to take heart. This was, in most cases, not about you. We’re sorry that your experience with being nominated for a Hugo was poisoned by this nonsense. You will be back.
Last night’s results don’t mean that the Hugo voters or their alleged puppet-masters are saying that only one kind of fiction will be allowed to win.
That’s really closer to the result the puppy-masters were after.
The Hugo results mean one thing: fandom rose up in revulsion and cried, “We don’t want this system gamed with block voting. You want to win a Hugo, win it the way you’re supposed to: by blowing away the readership with such brilliance that people can’t abide the idea of NOT giving you a Hugo.”
And, not coincidentally:
“Not spewing racism and homophobia and threats of violence all over the internet, and not smiling indulgently when your fans do the same, would also be a plus.”
Comment By: Laurie Mann
August 23rd, 2015 at 8:46 am
I generally agree with what you’ve said. I’ll observe there is a handful of people whose work I will never read or support in any way in the future. It’s a small handful, but it’s definitely there. Most of them are puppies, a couple are extremists on the other side (and I align myself with SJW, just not with extremists).
Comment By: Nick Sanders
August 23rd, 2015 at 10:17 am
I walked back to my hotel and chatted with a Baen author along the way. I made the mistake of saying that certain authors had suffered career damage as the result of aligning with the Pupsters. “No they didn’t,” he replied. This morning, I see where he was coming from. As you wrote, they will continue to write and sell their works, and most people will continue to buy them if they are good SF. And if they are good enough, then they will receive a nomination — and win — a Hugo Award.
Comment By: Brian McNett
August 23rd, 2015 at 10:17 am
Just as an aside, Liu Cixin’s “Three Body Problem” is just the sort of HARD science fiction the puppies said couldn’t win. Modulo that it’s Chinese, of course, and we’re getting it in translation.
Comment By: Mark Yanes
August 23rd, 2015 at 10:17 am
Nicely put.
Comment By: GinaMarie Vick
August 23rd, 2015 at 11:17 am
I think time will tell with regard to damaged careers. A few people (who actually I’d not heard of and there is only one of me anyway) left such a nasty taste in my mouth that I won’t ever read or buy anything that would support them. So they join the one person (who was actually a nominee this year) on my permanent “do not read, ever again” list. We’ll see if others like me avoid certain of these writers over time. Also a couple of people have behaved so terribly I hope no editor gives them the time of day after this. There should be consequences for being public assholes. This isn’t about their politics or any trumped up culture war nonsense. This is about behaving like civilized human beings to each other.
Comment By: Tom Easton
August 23rd, 2015 at 11:00 am
In other words, don’t play politics with the process.
Play writer.
That’s what it’s about.
Comment By: David Vineyard
August 23rd, 2015 at 1:17 pm
Simple decency really won. Fans rejected the politics of hate and exclusion, and supported reason and good will.
Maybe bow puppies will grow up.
Comment By: ThirteenthLetter
August 23rd, 2015 at 1:33 pm
While you’re doing your victory dance, could the defeated side at least have an apology for the massive news media slander campaign? You know, calling Brad Torgersen a racist, all that stuff? Now that you’ve won, you can drop the pretense that it was anything other than a political move.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 23rd, 2015 at 3:48 pm
As a man who has enjoyed Brad Torgersen’s company more than once, I have never called him a racist and I am not required to apologize for everything ever said about him by anyone on the planet.
I do think that if you want to know why the Sads and Rabids have been plastered with the label of racist, you really need to look at the some of the things that have been said by their standard-bearers, including the writer on the ballot proud of belonging to the Facebook group “Black Lives Don’t Matter,” or the Rabid organizer who just said,
“I don’t consider all black people to be half-savages. I mean, some people are. Here in Europe, for example, we have actual proper Africans, not African-Americans. This leads to problems, like people shitting on top of the closed toilets. They don’t know how to use indoor plumbing, okay? This is not civilized behavior.”
Associate yourself with such people and the smell starts to linger.
But I don’t believe it of Brad, specifically, nor have I ever claimed it.
Comment By: Marcy Lyn-Waitsman
August 23rd, 2015 at 3:58 pm
What ever happened to the Hogu Award? They would have had lots of fun with all this!
Comment By: ThirteenthLetter
August 23rd, 2015 at 7:36 pm
“Associate yourself with such people and the smell starts to linger.”
Physician, heal thyself.
The anti-Puppies have been breathtakingly vicious, and even if every single word you say about people like Vox is true your campaign has had more than its share of innocent victims. If you want there to be any actual healing, you can start by acknowledging that.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 23rd, 2015 at 7:45 pm
Define “my” campaign and name “my” innocent victims.
Comment By: Ed Stalker
August 23rd, 2015 at 9:26 pm
Hey, I’m happy.
I have used a simple formula for decades. If it says “Hugo-winner” and was published in this century, I automatically put it back on the shelf as worth neither my time nor money.
If the puppies had won, I might have to once again check out Hugo winners, to see if there is anything worth reading among them.
The Hugo winners of the 21st Century remain worthless to me, and that is fine by me.
I have to admit, the fact that John Scalzi, of all people, is writing a story in the “Black Tide Rising” anthology is cringe-worthy. I’ve never read anything by him that was worth my money, and I suppose I will have to endure his words in the Anthology.
I have been reading SF for fifty years now, and the SFWA has been swirling down the toilet for most of that time, in my opinion.
I am not, by the way, white. My Father is Native American, my mother is Japanese. I didn’t learn English until I was five, and I still have trouble with it at times.
I really don’t care what a writer IS, other than a good writer.
I self-identify with the Puppies because they write good SF, worth my money and time. The converse is true of the SFWA clique.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 23rd, 2015 at 9:36 pm
So this has been true for all the many decades of this century?
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 23rd, 2015 at 9:59 pm
No, actually, I find that I have to unpack this.
For “decades now,” any book that won a Hugo, you put back on the shelf, knowing that it’s not worth reading, and this includes books not just by Scalzi, but by Vinge, Sawyer, Bujold, Gaiman, a book by Chabon that also won the Pulitzer.
And you knew without reading them that they were not worth reading.
You knew they were not worth reading because they had won Hugos.
Mr. Stalker, I happen to read mysteries too, and I have from time to time noted that a book had the Edgar-Award winner line on the cover. Sometimes it is by a name I know, sometimes it is not. If I do not read the book, I do not claim to know whether it is “worth reading,” only whether I have read it or not. Sometimes I turn them down out of preference. Sometimes the award citation gets me to pick them up out of curiosity. The award is not always an automatic guarantor of quality, nor do I claim it is. I do know, however, that I deliberately ignored decades of Edgar winners, because I somehow knew that Edgar winners were not worth reading, and then represented my ignorance-by-choice as learned wisdom, I would qualify as that worst of all opinion holders, a know-nothing. I do not claim expertise on vast swaths of fiction I refuse to read out of preconception. I would understand if people found that position awfully flaky. I really would.
Comment By: ThirteenthLetter
August 23rd, 2015 at 10:03 pm
“Define “my” campaign and name “my” innocent victims.”
You seem to be pret-ty darned sympathetic to the anti-Puppy faction. If I’ve misinterpreted you and you condemn their behavior, please say so and I’ll apologize for my accusations.
But quite aside from that, you’re trying to tamp down the fires, trying to say that it’s really not such a big deal. I’m telling you that it was a big deal to the innocent people who got slandered and attacked and threatened by the anti-Puppy side, and they are not going to be satisfied with “well, it’s over, I promise that even though it’s editors and SFWA leadership that were running the smear campaign they won’t hold it against your career, let’s just forget this ever happened.”
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 24th, 2015 at 11:05 am
I am an SJW by default because I considered the entire puppy argument laughable. Thanks for asking. I did, however, counsel against hostilities, except when hostilities were offered.
Comment By: Gary Roulston
August 23rd, 2015 at 11:43 pm
Words were used by both sides of this that were hurtful. Statements by people identifying themselves as employees of a major publishing house said thar long time SF readers were not fans and another called both the Rabid Puppies and by implication the Sad Puppies neo-NAZIs. Until that point I was not involved. As an American Mongrel I have a mix of many ethnic groups and am proud of them all. However, anyone who calls me a mixed blood Jew any kind of NAZI crossed the line and there will never be a rapprochement with those who support them. Remember Auchwitz, Dachau, and the Warsaw Ghetto! My people damn sure do!
Comment By: Dana Corby
August 24th, 2015 at 12:47 am
As someone looking at this debacle mostly from the outside — I like science fiction but am not what a Fan would call a fan — I have to say that to the uninitiated it’s been the Puppies whose rhetoric and tactics have seemed the more distasteful.This despite the fact that the more old-fashioned science fiction (boy, *there’s* an oxymoron!) they prefer is what I like better, too. The Puppies’ tactics have looked to me like a combination of bullying and attempted ballot-stuffing.
Comment By: Bill Greene
August 24th, 2015 at 12:45 pm
I think there is a certain amount of irony in puppy supporters calling out those who wouldn’t meekly accept their bullshit as purveyors of vicious attacks. How is it that people who do exactly what your leaders do are terrible human beings, but your cause is just and right? That smacks of a stunning amount of hubris and hypocrisy.
And to be honest, I haven’t seen anything anti puppy that has been in the same league as the things Vox Day and Brad Torgerson have said. Please, though, feel free to give me some actual links to such hate speech by the anti puppy side. Oh, and a link to someone saying “So and so said such and such to me” is not proof, it is hearsay.
Comment By: Alex Krislov
August 24th, 2015 at 2:01 pm
Adam-Troy, nicely said. This whole thing has been painful to watch…and some of the poison aimed at friends I’ve treasured for decades has made it even worse. I’ve been reading the field since the mid-sixties, and I’ve never seen anything comparable to this. I only hope it turns out to be a single-year phenomenon.
Comment By: ThirteenthLetter
August 24th, 2015 at 11:46 pm
“I did, however, counsel against hostilities, except when hostilities were offered.”
Could you be more specific? Is there any particular action that anti-Puppies took which you could bring yourself to condemn? Or has every single action that every single one of them took been pure and decent?
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 25th, 2015 at 8:28 am
Answering your comment in two different different ways, Thirteenthletter:
1) As with any number of contentious issues in the past, there were incidents of pile-on, which included abusive e-mails, and in those cases where they were directed at puppy authors I condemned it. I thought it was a bad thing to stereotype all puppies as rampaging bigots when only some of them used bigoted rhetoric, and I said so.
And now that I’ve answered your question, by providing the “just one” you asked for, hear me:
2) I am not your dancing monkey, sir. I do not perform on command.
My writings on the subject, going back years, long before this iteration, can be found on Facebook, and searched by anybody with a keyboard and patience. You will find among other things in my writings multiple counsels toward peace, multiple defenses of writers who committed no sin worse than being associated with the movement against their will, and multiple defenses of Brad Torgersen, amid my multiple expressions of revulsion at the craziness I saw coming from the movement, all cited in specific. I am under no obligation to recap my history at your behest, when your mission here is not understanding but confrontation.
Comment By: Doug Irvin
August 25th, 2015 at 8:23 am
Adam,
You’re real good at counselling SP that they should renounce or be thought allies of people like Vox Day. Do you intend to practise what you preach?
Make it easy: how do you feel about a certain TOR editor calling readers and allies of Sad Puppies Neo-Nazis? Or maybe Entertainment Weekly’s little jaunt into libel (yes, I know they recanted – under legal pressure) by referring to all Sad Puppies to be misogynist, while, Mormon males?
Or how about this one:
Patrick Nielsen Hayden verbally assaulted L. Jagi Lamplighter as she approached him to make a friendly overture. Verball assaulted, cursed her, then stomped off like a pretentious, spoiled brat.
Do you, Adam Troy-Castro – so quick to accuse others – denounce him? Or will you make excuses?
I’m fairly sure you’ll stammer and stutter out an excuse, “Well, that’s just hearsay!”
Read what her HUSBAND had to say about it:
http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/08/in-memoriam-of-the-hugo-awards/
Or is his testimony suspect as well, since, after all, he’s an associate of the dreaded Vox Day.
Adam, we have a word for you, and it isn’t SJW.
You’re a HYPOCRITE.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 25th, 2015 at 8:50 am
If Neilsen Hayden “verbally assaulted” Lamplighter, he is an asshole and should be condemned for it.
I do indeed have my doubts it happened precisely as described, but given the account as presented, it was bad behavior and I have no problem condemning it.
If not taking the account as Wright presents it strikes you as hypocrisy, listen to this: almost all the other unpleasantness surrounding this issue, including everything said by Vox Day, everything said by John C. Wright, everything said by those who oppose them, everything said by me, has been said at a keyboard. You want to argue over whether certain words were said and what they meant, you have the fucking words to chew on. They’re in black and white. When Vox Day writes ameliorating words in defense of mass murderers for racist reasons, those words can later be searched, excerpted, chewed on. When I say that he or you or anybody else is an asshole, those words can later be searched, excerpted, chewed on. When Lou Antonelli says that he wrote the cops about David Gerrold, those words are spoken for attribution. They exist, on podcast. They can be searched, excerpted, chewed on. When David Gerrold reacts to that with anger, those words appear online. They can be searched, excerpted, chewed on.
Something somebody allegedly snarls at somebody else in a Worldcon room party is less concrete. You only need to have had one “you said that, no I didn’t say that” argument in your life, and see the incident later blown up out of all proportion, with new offenses added to make it a better story — to know that when rising tempers are concerned, we are all, ALL, suspect witnesses, whether you’re John C. Wright or Patrick Nielsen Hayden or the Dali Lama.
I have no idea what happened between Hayden and Lamplighter at that party, none. I *will never know*.
Nor will you.
But the words written, willingly, for attribution, online?
No words written by anybody else have done as much to indict John C. Wright or Theodore Beale or anybody else involved with this mess, as what they willingly wrote themselves, on their own fora. Everything else has been back-slapping from their supporters or commentary by the outraged.
You want to be similarly outraged at me, knock yourself out, but I find it interesting that you are doing so over things you perceive me not saying, or things you wish me to produce having said, not things I have actually said. I promise, you want to be outraged at me, you can find the words. I haven’t always been kind. But with your guys, I can point to specific words. You have thus far only pointed at absences, or at implications. Under the circumstances, it makes sense for me to tell you to toodle off and not come back until you have specific quotes you want to fleck spittle about.
And as for your other point?
I am not responsible for what ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY writes in its articles. I don’t write for ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. I don’t even think I got to read the goddamned thing in its original form, before it disappeared. But I am supposed to be able to answer for it? Fine, I’ll answer for it. If it said anything untrue about anybody, it was bad journalism, and deserved to disappear. I understand why it pissed people off, in that case. Simple. No skin off my nose.
And as for you? Asking me to answer for allegedly harsh words I wasn’t around to hear, and articles to which I contribute not so much as a punctuation mark?
I have a name for you, sir. It isn’t puppy. It isn’t even hypocrite. It’s silly, silly person.
Comment By: Old NFO
August 25th, 2015 at 11:31 am
So to ‘cancel’ block voting, your side block voted no award. Congratulations… And thank you for disenfranchisement of people like me, who don’t attend cons or ‘pay our dues’.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 25th, 2015 at 12:16 pm
Boy, am I a Macchiavellian puppet master.
I didn’t even have a supporting membership this time out.
Comment By: Smeagol
August 25th, 2015 at 12:19 pm
“Or how about this one:
Patrick Nielsen Hayden verbally assaulted L. Jagi Lamplighter as she approached him to make a friendly overture.”
No, not really. That dishonest characterization of what happened is useful for spinning the ALWAYS A VICTIM narrative the puppies have latched on to after being completely, utterly, and decisively repudiated by the voting members of WorldCon, but it’s not really reflective of the actual interaction.
“Read what her HUSBAND had to say about it:”
You mean the guy who admits he didn’t actually hear any of the conversation himself? The guy who has called PNH a “Christ hating crusader of Sodom”, “Smeagol”, Here’s a better idea – why don’t you read what SHE has to say about it?
“First, I think John has made it sound a bit worse than it was”
“Mr, Nielsen Hayden did shout, swear, and stomp off… but he was shouting and swearing at/about John, not at me personally and, actually, as far as swearing, he just used the phrase ‘tell him to shovel it up his…’ You can figure out the rest.”
Wright’s history of playing fast and loose with the truth to suit his rhetorical needs continues unabated
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 25th, 2015 at 12:23 pm
Okay, I’ll accept her account, that Mr. Nielsen Hayden told her that her husband could shove it up his ass.
Not great behavior. Bad behavior.
Understandable behavior given that Wright had called him a Christ-Hating Crusader for Sodom, and other things, but hey, if that’s the worst you’ve got, yes, Mr. Nielsen Hayden acted poorly.
See how fucking easy that is?
Comment By: Larry Leventhal
August 27th, 2015 at 8:47 pm
Funny reading this stuff and rather sad. I have been reading SF for over 50 years and to be honest I can’t think of ever paying attention to whether a book had an award or not. I picked them up because the cover caught my eye or the story caught my interest. If I paid attention to it I am sure award winners landed on the liked and disliked pile. The only trend that has annoyed me was the overshadowing of the genre by fantasy so many shelves I looked at for scifi was stocked with fantasy stories. I have enjoyed the new wave, the non hard science stuff, the Larry Niven school, right now I am on a military jag which I am sure is filled with people associated with puppy slate. And I love the stuff they probably don’t like as well. So I find it odd to make a declaration of anything winning a Hugo is not worthy of reading, to me that is just odd but understandable in a subjective way as taste is subjective.
I guess the saddest part of all this is that now everyone is pissed and the conventions will be not as much fun for various people who whatever their stance should be able to enter these events and just enjoy themselves. And that is my two cents which is probably worth a fraction of that at these current currency exchange rates.