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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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I'm not sure the Sad Puppies were "largely irrelevant" unless you're talking just about those vs the Rabid Puppies (I'm a little fuzzy on the distinction) but this article suggests that they actually did matter in terms of nominations.

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They had an impact, but I suspect that a deeper analysis of the data will find that absent Vox Day mobilizing his nutjob followers, Sad Puppies 3 would have been roughly as successful as Sad Puppies 1 & 2, which I think it would be fair to call largely irrelevant.

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This is not quite accurate and a little inflammatory in comparison to what happened.

 

Sorry, my bad - sleepy misreading of a report - there were a _lot_ of "No Awards", though, which does feel like a line in the sand.

The other thing from the Wired article is how few people Vox Day needed to shit the works up - 390? Really? That's his army?

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The Wired article was a pretty good breakdown, but I find the implication was science fiction has historically been apolitical or that non-white man writers have already recently entered the scene to be misleading. Sci-fi has always been political - even overtly so - and many of the biggest names from the genre's past are women. Like Gamergate, one danger of the whole Puppies thing is an attempt to rewrite the history of the genre, so that an "SJW" invasion seems more threatening. 

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(And the part about the Puppies immediately declaring victory and tagging in Gamergate seems wholly and depressingly correct.)

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The Wired article was a pretty good breakdown, but I find the implication was science fiction has historically been apolitical or that non-white man writers have already recently entered the scene to be misleading. Sci-fi has always been political - even overtly so - and many of the biggest names from the genre's past are women. Like Gamergate, one danger of the whole Puppies thing is an attempt to rewrite the history of the genre, so that an "SJW" invasion seems more threatening. 

 

Yeah - it's a tempting narrative, but, to paraphrase Kameron Hurley, woman have always written sci-fi, although increasingly not under noms de plume (like James Tiptree), and likewise gay people and people of colour. It is perhaps more accurate to say that sci-fi is over time starting to dismantle some of the barriers that have historically been placed in the path of these writers, as in the case of Samuel R Delany in 1967:

 

I submitted Nova for serialization to the famous sf editor of Analog Magazine, John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell rejected it, with a note and phone call to my agent explaining that he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character. That was one of my first direct encounters, as a professional writer, with the slippery and always commercialized form of liberal American prejudice: Campbell had nothing against my being black, you understand. (There reputedly exists a letter from him to horror writer Dean Koontz, from only a year or two later, in which Campbell argues in all seriousness that a technologically advanced black civilization is a social and a biological impossibility. . . .). No, perish the thought! Surely there was not a prejudiced bone in his body! It’s just that I had, by pure happenstance, chosen to write about someone whose mother was from Senegal (and whose father was from Norway), and it was the poor benighted readers, out there in America’s heartland, who, in 1967, would be too upset. . .

 

One of the many, many things the Sad Puppies are comically wrong about is the idea that sci-fi used to be a playground for manly libertarians; even in the 60s, Poul Anderson and Robert Heinlein were outliers in a primarily progressive group, and even they, to quote Delaney again, would rather go to a party with left-wing sci-fi writers than actually to hang out with their political peers.

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The Wired article was a pretty good breakdown, but I find the implication was science fiction has historically been apolitical or that non-white man writers have already recently entered the scene to be misleading. Sci-fi has always been political - even overtly so - and many of the biggest names from the genre's past are women. Like Gamergate, one danger of the whole Puppies thing is an attempt to rewrite the history of the genre, so that an "SJW" invasion seems more threatening.

A narrative of speculative fiction that excludes women has always been at work, though. It's why people still bother to remember Terry Brooks, despite the extremely derivative nature of his writing, because otherwise the bridge between Tolkien and Jordan is all women: McCaffrey, Norton, Bradley, Lafferty, Kurtz, and so on. Good reading on this is Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing and its addendum, "She Wrote It, But It Was A Fad."

Personally, I'm thrilled at the outcome. Whenever the reactionary side of nerd culture tries to stage a showdown, they fail. I don't expect them to learn, but it's a little bit good to see that they only have power in the shadows (and their own minds).

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Still, this is depressing as hell. If their goal had been to 'win' the Hugos, sure, they failed. Yet – and this mirrors gamergate without distortion – their goal, from the get-go, was disruption and destruction.

 

So, yeah, I'd call this their win. This is the only way they'll ever win, and that's why we'll likely see something similar next year (more covert op/chan-y presumably). This is, literally, why we can't have good things.

 

Neo-fascist terrorists, the lot.

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Somebody made this point on Twitter, and I kind of agree, that it's weird to see games people celebrate the Hugos mostly shutting down the shoehorned-in puppy nominees, because if anything that shows what impact big institutions can have in this regard and that's all the more a bad look for our scene then, where a lot of big players (heh) are either not talking about the ongoing garbage at all or issuing anemic "harassment is bad, mkay" statements.

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Still, this is depressing as hell. If their goals had been to 'win' the Hugos, sure, they failed. Yet – and this mirrors gamergate without distortion – their goal, from the get-go, was disruption and destruction.

So, yeah, I'd call this their win. This is the only way they'll ever win, and that's why we'll likely see something similar next year (more covert op/chan-y presumably). This is, literally, why we can't have good things.

Neo-fascist terrorists, the lot.

Eh, their "win" was really months ago, when they gamed the nominations. Yesterday's outcome was fans of all types rejecting the Puppies' methods and agenda, in record numbers. Sure, there were examples of "no award" being used — maybe slightly unfairly in the case of "Totaled," which wasn't terrible like almost every other Puppies nominee, and... well, that's a discussion for the Books subforum — but overall it was the Hugos functioning as well as they possibly could, given the Puppies' sabotage. The entire situation isn't ideal, for sure, but the "new normal" settled in with relative consensus and calm.

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Still, this is depressing as hell. If their goal had been to 'win' the Hugos, sure, they failed. Yet – and this mirrors gamergate without distortion – their goal, from the get-go, was disruption and destruction.

So, yeah, I'd call this their win. This is the only way they'll ever win, and that's why we'll likely see something similar next year (more covert op/chan-y presumably). This is, literally, why we can't have good things.

Neo-fascist terrorists, the lot.

The thing about Vox Day is that anything would be a win for him -- and considering he's basically the leader, that means there's basically no way for the various Puppy movements to lose. As long as they have an impact and people pay attention to their tantrum, they come out on top. And if people don't pay attention to them, it's proof to them that the conspiracy they've imagined is real and they need to keep fighting it.

That's one of the most distressing things about this kind of movement -- GamerGate or the Sad/Rabid Puppies. You can't acknowledge them and you can't ignore them. Both reinforce to them that they're doing the right thing.

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Still, this is depressing as hell. If their goal had been to 'win' the Hugos, sure, they failed. Yet – and this mirrors gamergate without distortion – their goal, from the get-go, was disruption and destruction.

 

If you assume they're not just blatantly lying, I don't think that was the goal of the Sad Puppy organizers. They have fairly consistently expressed two objections to who has won the Hugo awards:

  1. Best-selling "pulp" Sci-fi books are routinely ignored by voters in favor of more literary fare with less commercial success.
  2. Works with progressive themes or written by members of marginalized groups routinely receive praise from voters disproportionate to their literary and commercial merit.

I think both objections are almost entirely BS, but I don't see much wrong with pulp authors organizing their readers to vote in what is, after all, a process intentionally open to anyone willing to register a supporting membership. It's perhaps gauche, but hardly destructive and seemed to me genuinely motivated by a desire to see the type of books they write win Hugos, not burn the Hugos down. Burning everything down seems the domain of Beale, his Rabid Puppies, and their reactionary nutjob allies.

 

edit: I should note, they brought this on themselves by including Beale on their slate last year, standing up for him then, and placing a work he published on their slate this year. It gave him room to co-opt their movement for his own purposes, and while it amplified their reach it amplified the backlash far more.

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It was the Rabid Puppies, not the Sad Puppies, who dominated the nominations though.

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It was the Rabid Puppies, not the Sad Puppies, who dominated the nominations though.

Yeah, and the Sad Puppies conscripted Beale to do their fighting for them, only to have him lose it for them, by his very involvement, and poison any goodwill towards the objectives of their movement forever.

It's a very clear loss for Torgensen and Correia, who are largely persona non grata in sci-fi now, whereas Beale has been striving mightily to move the goalposts for his own shit-stirring from "taking over" the Hugos in the short term to burning them down in the long term, ever since he discovered that his 390 stormtroopers or whatever are an order of magnitude fewer than just the most devoted of his opponents.

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Yeah, and the Sad Puppies conscripted Beale to do their fighting for them, only to have him lose it for them, by his very involvement, and poison any goodwill towards the objectives of their movement forever.

 

I see it more as Beale having appointed himself the figurehead over their half-hearted objections, but either way you're exactly right that it backfired spectacularly on Torgersen and Correia.

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I see it more as Beale having appointed himself the figurehead over their half-hearted objections, but either way you're exactly right that it backfired spectacularly on Torgersen and Correia.

I'm on my phone, so I can't really give links, but I believe the arguments for behind-the-scenes collusion are the Rabid Puppy slate going up less than a day after the Sad Puppy slate, implying that Beale was probably shown a draft beforehand; the presence of Beale, Wright, and company on the Sad Puppy slate despite lacking literary merit, courting their ongoing investment; and the weeks before Torgensen and Correia bothered even to tried distancing themselves from Beale, despite dozens of posts from both sides of the aisle asking them to do just that.

The lattermost is the really baffling one, since both Torgensen and Correia put out shockingly milquetoast repudiations, of the "Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism..." variety, Correia's FDR, Churchill, and Stalin analogy in particular. It feels pretty clear to me that they hoped for Beale to bury their opponents without getting them dirty themselves. I'm probably being a bit too spiteful, though. It's possible that Torgensen and Correia were unaware of how stupid their actions could turn out to be.

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This is what my friend Chris had to say about the whole thing, he made this public post after everything was all said and done with the Hugos this year.  Chris is my window into the inner workings of sci-fi.  He's one of the people that runs KU's Center for the Study of Science Fiction, is a published sci-fi author, teaches sci-fi, was mentored by one of the (actual title) Grandmasters of science-fiction, and is one of the organizers of another sci-fi conference and award.  Dude knows his shit. 

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This is what my friend Chris had to say about the whole thing, he made this public post after everything was all said and done with the Hugos this year.  Chris is my window into the inner workings of sci-fi.  He's one of the people that runs KU's Center for the Study of Science Fiction, is a published sci-fi author, teaches sci-fi, was mentored by one of the (actual title) Grandmasters of science-fiction, and is one of the organizers of another sci-fi conference and award.  Dude knows his shit. 

 

Excellent post and full of the hope that I think the Hugos need moving forward.

 

I've noted that Beale and Breitbart are both crowing about how sci-fi fans were forced to burn their house down rather than invite them in, but "no award" is not some unprecedented nuclear option, like you'd be excused for thinking if you followed the tweets of various Puppies. It has been used before, though never in banner categories, when there just wasn't a strong contender for a Hugo in a given year and people didn't want to put a weak compromise alongside the greats from previous years. The lack of strong contenders was definitely the case in all the Puppies-dominated categories this year, with even the best short story "Totaled" being an "ideal" Hugo loser, in my opinion, so the use of "no award" was appropriate, unless you feel like someone should win just for showing up. No, nothing's been burned down, the Hugos will happen next year as planned, and two years from now the rules will change so slates will be mostly useless if the intent is to shut out other nominees (now there will be multiple rounds of finalists, where finalists coming from a set of nominations with fewer other finalists will be given more weight, and voters can nominate only four works out of a final pool of six). It's a completely obvious and meaningless attempt at spin, especially from Beale, who is notorious for either winning the game or quitting it because it's unfair.

 

io9 is putting out good coverage, especially compared to the Wired article, which displays an uncomfortable willingness to take Torgensen at face value, given how he's done stuff like editing the comments of Puppies opponents on his blog into caricatures of their arguments when they took his request for people who voted "no award" to explain themselves at face value. I especially liked reading io9's reconstruction of an alternate-history Hugo ceremony without any Puppies nominees, even if I find it a bit fanciful, and a separate writer there a few days ago did a good job of explaining that, if it was really true that "SJWs are already rigging the Hugos with their lockstep groupthink, so slates are fair game for reactionaries too," then it wouldn't have been possible for the Sad and Rabid Puppies to sweep so many categories in the nominations like they did. No, they simply would have cancelled out the left-leaning conspiracy and been presented with a mixed set of finalists. By not voting for nominations in good faith, the Puppies proved that everyone else was voting in good faith, and it's possible to argue that their doom in the finals was sealed right there.

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If you assume they're not just blatantly lying, I don't think that was the goal of the Sad Puppy organizers. They have fairly consistently expressed two objections to who has won the Hugo awards:

 

Just as gamergate has assured us that journalistic ethics was the name of the game. All right, that comparison gets us nowhere. Of course, it's hard to convince the mob to take action if you're not telling them that total victory is at their doorstep.

 

And, sure enough, you can retroactively redefine your goals pretty easily. Said Beale:

 

They are practicing a scorched earth strategy, and we can certainly assist them in that since we do not value their territory. I still think it was worth trying to take Berlin and end the war in one fell swoop, but even though our attempt break them once and for all failed, that only means that the victory was less than complete. [...] The five categories burned last night are only the first sparks of the cleansing conflagration that is coming.

 

Cleansing, really? Sorry, but this sounds eerily like the "cleansing of the German spirit" Joseph Goebbels declared at a Book burning in Berlin.

 

And that territory of the enemy Beale and his Nazis don't value? It's called Science Fiction.

 

I still do think it was their victory. The Hugos will have to be reformed so that this doesn't happen again. :mellow:

 

 

/edit: Trying to find any James Gunn quotes on the matter for obvious reasons. Any links handy, anyone?

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As long as the SF community is as engaged in the nominating vote next year as they were in the final vote this year, this isn't happening again.

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I'm not fully down on how the nomination process works (actually, I am now), but it does seem like you could (and should) tweak the process to sidestep slate-voting. For instance, if each member can nominate 5 works, make the final voting draw from the top 8 works, so that no single ballot can drown out all alternatives (If you're worried about fragmentation in the final vote, I'd probably just do 4 nominees, 6 final). It looks like a relatively simply change like that would be possible (there's a quorom requirement of 25% of votes cast, but that wouldn't need to change).

 

They amended the constitution to add best podcast, so it's not like they don't make changes. And even though it's impetus is somewhat political, I feel like this would be a relatively apolitical change. Still probably game-able, but I only thought about it for 5 minutes, so I'm sure they could come up with improvements.

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I'm not fully down on how the nomination process works (actually, I am now), but it does seem like you could (and should) tweak the process to sidestep slate-voting. For instance, if each member can nominate 5 works, make the final voting draw from the top 8 works, so that no single ballot can drown out all alternatives (If you're worried about fragmentation in the final vote, I'd probably just do 4 nominees, 6 final). It looks like a relatively simply change like that would be possible (there's a quorom requirement of 25% of votes cast, but that wouldn't need to change).

 

No, nothing's been burned down, the Hugos will happen next year as planned, and two years from now the rules will change so slates will be mostly useless if the intent is to shut out other nominees (now there will be multiple rounds of finalists, where finalists coming from a set of nominations with fewer other finalists will be given more weight, and voters can nominate only four works out of a final pool of six).

 

The amendments have to be ratified at a subsequent Worldcon, leaving the door open next year for one last round of abuse, but they're likely to pass, although the 4/6 nomination process will probably be chanced to 5/6, which works better with the "E Pluribus Hugo" system. After next year, slates will be powerless and reactionary assholes will have to figure out a different explanation for increasing progressive influence in sci-fi.

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Voting systems in general are super interesting! ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem ) Basically it's impossible to design a voting system that doesn't leave something to be desired, and therefore you have to intelligently pick which weaknesses you think fit for your particular problem!

I took a class in college that was crosslisted between the PoliSci department & the Math department that was all about the mathematics of voting systems & elections that was super cool, and talked about things like this a lot, and what's the best way to discourage people from gaming the system.

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