Thoughts on ‘Sad Puppies’ Three








I think he makes a number of errors.

According to the graph (and his own words)






Now, as far as this goal:










8 thoughts on “Thoughts on ‘Sad Puppies’ Three”

  1. Torgerson’s writing was, IMHO, the worst I’ve seen in a Hugo nomination in years; it had no business being there. It was more technically skilled than Vox’s story, but it was utterly soulless. There was no bloody there there. His Mil-SF stuff had the tropes of Mil-SF without any interesting ideas or character development. Vox’s wasn’t good, certainly wasn’t Hugo material, but would have been just fine in a typical SF/Fantasy pulp magazine back when there were more of them. Torgerson’s was a waste of my time.

    And while I think Correia may be personally and politically annoying, and his writing wasn’t as good as the people who beat him, it was fun; after the voting was over I went back and finished reading his trilogy (still working on Wheel of Time 🙂 It was more comic-bookish than deep, but the pacing was great, the characters were good enough, there were some ideas and he handled them well.

    (And Orbit didn’t do themselves many favors by only providing excerpts; there wasn’t enough of Ancillary Justice for me to decide whether I liked it.)

  2. See, my problem with the argument that SJW’s (? an appellation I would never give myself, curiously enough, and with which I do not identify) don’t like swashbuckling fun is that I, for one, thought my own Spiritwalker books WERE swashbuckling fun, and I’m not the writer whom they ID as an SJW who writes “fun” books.

    1. There is some kind of major typo in the last phrase of that comment! I think I must have accidentally cut out a few words.

      The point I was trying to make is that if writers they ID as SJWs can’t write swashbuckling fun, and if I *did* write a trilogy with swashbuckling fun, then, by that definition I can (thank goodness) no longer be defined (by them) as an SJW. RIght?

  3. This whole idea makes my head spin. It’s illogical. I keep wanting to shout “That idea does not mean what you think it means” to mangle a Princess Bride quote.

    Every single person who votes for the Hugos buys SFF books and DVDs of SFF movies. Every single one. Voting for the Hugos doesn’t negate that fact. It doesn’t take ANYONE out of the General SFF Consumer Audience.

    If anything, Hugo voters probably consume more SFF books and movies than average. An argument could be made that being exposed to more…variety…in genre might, somehow, give voters a better feel for quality in the writing, insight into tired, over used tropes, build in a bullshit meter, and in general make them more discriminating in the works they vote for. It’s a radical idea, I know, and I’m sure someone less sarcastic than I am could make a good case for it. ::cough::

    The only reason I don’t vote for the Hugos every year is money. I’m not the only one who can’t afford a membership to WorldCon, even a supporting membership. That sad yellow ball, so tiny and forlorn, would be much larger if we could.

  4. I don’t see the logic (so to speak) in proposing to open Hugo voting to a wider population, when most of the people who currently qualify to vote aren’t even interested enough to vote. I’ve forgotten the figure , but isn’t it something like: only about 1/3 of WorldCon members vote on the Hugos?

    Before saying, “Hey! Let’s get everyone interested in any aspect of sf/f–including people who watch lots of sf movies but almost never read a book–in voting on the Hugos!”…. Wouldn’t it make more sense to study why most of the people who currently qualify to vote don’t bother to? And see if that “problem” can be addressed and improved on?

    Is the solution to Hugo relevance really to make the vote available to even MORE people who might not vote? To people who don’t read? To people who only read NYT bestsellers?

    If the Hugo becomes a reflection of sf/f books that open at #1 on the NYT bestseller list (ex. Diana Gabaldon, Charlaine Harris, GRRM, Neil Gaiman, Stephanie Meyer, Laurell Hamilton, JD Robb), which strikes me as a not-unlikely outcome of opening it to everyone who reads sf/f (since the number of people who read mega-selling titles is HUGE) then won’t we wind up reading writer blogs before long that demand the genre create another award that reflects “quality” or “genre values” rather than “just mainstream popularity” and gives midlisters and genre writers who’ll never open at #1 on the NYT list a shot at wining/recognition? Maybe via an award that only truefen vote on? And then a few years later, before you know it, we’re right back in this very spot, with some writers complaining that the new award left wing, exclusive, irrelevant, and/or ignores mainstream audience preferences.

    I also don’t see how creating even MORE categories would make the Hugo more relevant or less obscure. My impression has long been that TV/movie companies don’t care if they win a Hugo, and that awarding Hugos to Hollywood has not raised the award’s profile at all. And I am unconvinced that this would be very different with gaming companies than with film/TV production companies.

    I’m not trying to say that the Hugos are perfect as-is. And I agree that greater voter participation would help make them more relevant. But when most people qualified to vote on the Hugos don’t bother, I can’t agree that opening the Hugos to a much wider vote is the game-changing solution, in much the way that Hugo’s experience with Hollywood also make me disagree that opening them to gaming companies would be a game-changing profile raiser.

  5. Based on what I read on the Internet and see in the 2014 Hugo results, Sad Puppies appears to be a method to take money from conservstive Authors and redistribute it to a Liberal Conventions that honor Libeeral Authors.

    I’m not sure how much this will help Sad Puppies, but it has got to help finance WorldCon for a few more years. Until Sad Puppies figure it out.

  6. Social Justice Warriors write boring shit. Their boring shit suffers from two big problems:

    1. It is all about sexism racism homophobia transphobia etc, in other words, about our world now, Even if the condemnation of racism is nominally being done by greenskinned martian elves, it is obvious that they are not greenskinned martian elves, but early twenty first century Americans mouthing early twenty first century American piety. And even if the social justice warrior is an englishman, still early twenty first century Americans. Further, even if the greenskinned martian elves are standins for black americans, and the author is herself is black female lesbian american, they still sound like white early twenty first century Americans.

    2. Utilitarian ethics are no fun. For example in Iron Sun, a peaceful planet is destroyed in an unprovoked attack. However the inhabitants of that planet had anticipated this, it was not a total surprise to them, and prepared a doomsday fleet of planet busting killer robots to avenge their deaths in the event that their world suddenly got blown up.

    Stross then proceeds to piously argue that vengeance does not restore the dead, that most of the people on the planets to be destroyed in the vengeance strike had no part in the decision, etc, etc.

    That is no fun. The men that built the doomsday fleet were right, Stross is wrong, and, more importantly, the men that built the doomsday fleet were more fun.

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