posted
So, I'm not into SF enough to vote for/read any current year's Hugos, though I have used the list to find things to read (i.e. if A Deepness in the Sky beat out Cryptonomicon, A Civil Campaign and Harry Potter 3, then it must be a really good book).
It seems that this year a voting bloc was formed due to dissatisfaction with recent previous winners/nominees winning because authors or characters belonged to some sort of women/minorities, and they felt that the identities of the characters/authors and not the quality of the stories drove the victory. This year, the bloc had a list of what they nominated (largely mil-sf), and the Hugo ballot largely reflects it.
Like I said, I am not familiar with any of the recent books and nominees, so I don't know if the books that won in previous years were much of a stretch, or it's just about the way some get upset when commercial enterprises and government officials say Happy Holidays and think they are being oppressed or something. I'm also not well-versed in the Sad Puppies bloc to know if they have any taste in their book selections.
Many SF authors have asked people to be "No vote" on the ballot in protest, which if it wins, the awards began.
It's also all people can talk about. So, on the Bujold mailing list, there's a new book announced due to be published in about 11 months from now (LMB has insisted she was writing *nothing* for the past few years), and someone posted a *whopper* of a spoiler (allegedly attended a read of Ch. 1), and the reaction is what Sad Puppies would think. The spoiler is, um, a game-changer, though Bujold has hinted at it in drabbles throughout the series.
So, clearly very controversial. Thoughts? Some context about the content of the recent Hugo books would be appreciated.
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I think "we think people are voting the same way according to shared ideology, therefore we we should vote in lockstep so they don't get away with that" is one of the dumbest positions possible.
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The novel list is about as expected but everything else is dominated by a bloc of hardline religious conservatives, misogynists and homophobes. Sad indeed.
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I always hate issues like this, because they're invariably insular enough that by the time I hear about them, even the "description" articles are so full of contextual rhetoric and unqualified references to various events and players that I have a difficult time even figuring out what *happened*.
In this case, I've got a fairly decent idea, and it seems incredibly stupid and not something I want to involve myself in. I've seen the White Male Victim Complex played out in countless ways since I was a little kid, and it's a battle I've decided as of late to try and distance myself from as much as possible.
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Wait 'em out and pick battles from time to time seems to be the only thing that works in the long run for some things.
But even in cases where I want to sympathize with the White Male Victim card, which is sometimes fairly played, I usually can't let go of my sense of history enough to avoid thinking, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not have any unfair racial, religious, or gender collaboration and discrimination, guys! Now is when we're really, really sensitive to the unfairness of that after centuries or even millenia of such a lopsided game if you were on the other team you were hardly human!"
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So I guess to boil it down, a, uhm, pay-to-play anglosphere-dominated awards contest for sci-fi books gets overwhelmed by sad straight white men who are super angry at a possible erosion of what they deem to be a sufficient straight white man representation.
Let's not sell them so short so quick! Let us take a look at who they are valiantly bolstering up to fight back against the tide of political correctness
quote:I will point out that if you look at the Hugo Awards’ slate for this year you’ll see a record-breaking six nominations for John C. Wright, including three out of five of the best novella nominations being stories written by Wright.
Wright, a man so essential to the state of science fiction in 2015 that he doesn’t have a single bestseller, he’s signed with a micro-publisher based in Finland with a total of eight authors on its roster, and I’m the only person I know in real life who’s heard of him. Mainly because I hate-follow his incredible rants about how everything from the Syfy Network to “The Legend of Korra” is too gay for him to tolerate.
posted
I can't deny my bias is such that I am instinctively happy to disagree with anyone who supports someone who would openly write something like that (specifically, the LoK link). So that's out there, and it's fair to view my opinion through that lens.
That said, man, I think there might be some value in criticizing people who have folks like that so visibly, publicly in their ranks and don't reject them themselves. I'm fine with a conservative Christian not spending a few minutes each day denouncing Fred Phelps, or a liberal communist not denouncing Stalin. A little less so if they've never said anything critical on the subject, and still less if Fred or Stalin were around regularly kicking up controversy and didn't get repudiated at all. Just some frigging boilerplate, even, you don't have to dwell on how sorry you are this fringe scumbag exists, because you shouldn't be. Or rather you *are* sorry they exist, but not because it's any fault of yours.
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quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz: i.e. if A Deepness in the Sky beat out Cryptonomicon, A Civil Campaign and Harry Potter 3, then it must be a really good book
I'm ignoring all the depressing crazy and focusing on this. Vinge is one of my favorite authors, and yes, it's definitely worth reading. But IMO read A Fire Upon the Deep first. Even though A Deepness in the Sky is chronologically first, it was a prequel written later. (Incidentally A Fire Upon the Deep is also my third favorite book, after Anathem and The Worthing Saga).
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You are about three years too late for that advice, sorry. Read Deepness in the Sky and not Fire.
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I think there is something genuinely unfortunate that these Sad Puppies people are reacting against, namely a poisonous strand of social justice types who have a lot of influence in SF fandom. (If you want to know how bad it can get, read this.)
But the really unfortunate thing is what a bunch of no-talent psycho wingnuts the Sad Puppies authors are. The idea that anybody could nominate these authors for a Hugo with a straight face is laughable. It's like nominating Dan Brown for a Pulitzer.
John C. Wright isn't actually that bad--I liked his Golden Age trilogy, although it was super preachy libertarian propaganda. But he's a pretty bad short fiction writer from what I've read, so I can't imagine these three short works of his are much good.
It's quite unfortunate-- the Sci Phi Journal, a magazine of science fiction and philosophy which I was super excited about when I first learned of its existence--is affiliated with these SP crazies. I sold them a story a little while ago, before I knew the deal, and then I got paranoid and made sure to include an author bio that made it clear I was a left-winger. Hopefully just having my byline there won't get me black-listed by my fellow left-wingers.
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quote: It’s been a bit of a cluster**** since and has raised a bevy of new questions, mainly on what an award ceremony can mean if it’s so easily manipulated by two dudes and their Wordpress accounts, for better or worse.
quote:Ultimately, there’s only one sad, lonely question to ask at the end of all this: what can a prestigious award ceremony mean if it can be dominated this easily by so few voices? This situation also alludes to the strong possibility that the voters have stopped reading the works they’re voting for and are following the suggestions of the slate solely due to political ideology. Correia and Torgersen’s selection for “Best Graphic Story” selection (and it should be telling that there’s only one) is for Carter Reid’s The Zombie Nation Book #2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate. This raises the question: what the **** is The Zombie Nation Book #2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate? The endorsement follows Correia’s mission to prop books that would otherwise be underexposed. Zombie Nation appears to be a collection of webcomics that hasn’t warranted one review on Amazon. Are we to assume that every reader of Correia’s website bought and read this book? They may have, and it might deserve this dark horse acclaim. Or the voters might have blindly followed the list, and we can all wonder why The Wicked + The Divine missed out on a nomination because of an obscure zombie webcomic.
i think it's telling that this is literally the only place i'm on on the entire internet where i hear about this, or the hugo awards, at all
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For one thing, it's funny that the Hugos are considered the more "major" awards. The Nebulas are the ones that actually have a decent selection procedure which is less susceptible to gamesmanship.
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quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I think there is something genuinely unfortunate that these Sad Puppies people are reacting against, namely a poisonous strand of social justice types who have a lot of influence in SF fandom. (If you want to know how bad it can get, read this.)
But the really unfortunate thing is what a bunch of no-talent psycho wingnuts the Sad Puppies authors are. The idea that anybody could nominate these authors for a Hugo with a straight face is laughable. It's like nominating Dan Brown for a Pulitzer.
John C. Wright isn't actually that bad--I liked his Golden Age trilogy, although it was super preachy libertarian propaganda. But he's a pretty bad short fiction writer from what I've read, so I can't imagine these three short works of his are much good.
It's quite unfortunate-- the Sci Phi Journal, a magazine of science fiction and philosophy which I was super excited about when I first learned of its existence--is affiliated with these SP crazies. I sold them a story a little while ago, before I knew the deal, and then I got paranoid and made sure to include an author bio that made it clear I was a left-winger. Hopefully just having my byline there won't get me black-listed by my fellow left-wingers.
What I question is just how much influence these toxic social justice types actually have. I've acknowledged my bias already, so I'll skip that, but the thing that aggravates me the most isn't the wingnuts who get signed on in pursuit of defeating the toxic social justice warriors, it's not the toxic social warriors themselves, rather it's the larger body of people who seem* ready to react as though suddenly now that there's an actual contest over who should win (by default, a white male over anyone else) a given award, that means that suddenly due to the rule of two sides, both are just as problematic and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I'm imagining some alien observer of American culture, they've got those great big grey alien heads stuffed full of brains so they're tapped in to American culture on all its levels-the written word, movies, television, radio, music, art, food, a dozen other things I can't even think of right now. Predictably in a country that has until recently been overwhelmingly white, the culture has been as well, almost across the board.
But then a cloud appears. An award whose process of voting is actually pretty absurd, an award that has shared the same bias as the rest of the culture (for understandable reasons)...suddenly minorities and women start to get some wins. *Record scratch!* Outrage! Why these people are engaging in unfair collusion to see to it that their candidates win!
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quote:What I question is just how much influence these toxic social justice types actually have.
K. Tempest Bradford is an example of a toxic social justice type who seems fairly influential in fandom. She was a supporter of that nasty troll Requires Hate (from the link I posted earlier). I think this page from her site gives a good sense of her influence: http://tempest.fluidartist.com/non-fiction/
Indeed, Requires Hate herself was pretty influential!
In general, you should read that Laura Mixon blog post I linked to before prejudging that SF social justice crazies are a bunch of paper tigers or figments of someone's imagination.
quote:I've acknowledged my bias already, so I'll skip that, but the thing that aggravates me the most isn't the wingnuts who get signed on in pursuit of defeating the toxic social justice warriors, it's not the toxic social warriors themselves, rather it's the larger body of people who seem* ready to react as though suddenly now that there's an actual contest over who should win (by default, a white male over anyone else) a given award, that means that suddenly due to the rule of two sides, both are just as problematic and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I've thought that the wingnut SF social justice people were problematic for years, long before this Sad Puppies stuff even existed. Which is to say, it's not the existence of "two sides" that led to my low opinion of them.
quote:But then a cloud appears. An award whose process of voting is actually pretty absurd, an award that has shared the same bias as the rest of the culture (for understandable reasons)...suddenly minorities and women start to get some wins.
Let's be fair to the SP people (they do suck, but let's try and understand them). They don't have a problem with women and minorities winning awards. They have a problem with left-wing writers winning awards.
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I don't question that SJW types have influence. I was specifically referencing them in light of the 'group' they're opposing, a group that until very recently was simply put so successful it was just the default position.
quote:I've thought that the wingnut SF social justice people were problematic for years, long before this Sad Puppies stuff even existed. Which is to say, it's not the existence of "two sides" that led to my low opinion of them.
Yeah, sure, except it's a case of the fringe wingnuts vs. the gradually-less-but-still-overwhelming-monolith-that-is-supported-generally-without-even-considering-there-is-a-contest. My question is 'how problematic are they'? Is there basis for making a decision good? Well, usually not, that's true. Are they the only ones in the game who make choices while consciously or unconsciously vetting their choice on a racial or gender basis?
Well, way a hell less usually not.
As for what their problem is, well-they don't tend to object to left-wing writers winning awards because they inject socialism into their stories, do they? Or a safety net for the poor? Prison reform? No, it's pretty-much-always an objection on the basis of views expressed in writing about women and minorities and LGBT people.
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quote:I don't question that SJW types have influence. I was specifically referencing them in light of the 'group' they're opposing, a group that until very recently was simply put so successful it was just the default position.
Again, I think you're misidentifying the group the SP people represent. They don't represent white men, they represent right-wingers. And right-wingers have been outsiders in SF since the '60s. I don't think there's anything wrong with them being outsiders. I'm glad to be a part of communities where right-wing people feel a bit unwelcome. But when they feel unwelcome, that's not just their perception. They really are not mainstream and they haven't been for a long time.
quote:As for what their problem is, well-they don't tend to object to left-wing writers winning awards because they inject socialism into their stories, do they? Or a safety net for the poor? Prison reform? No, it's pretty-much-always an objection on the basis of views expressed in writing about women and minorities and LGBT people.
Well, it is also true that the left-wing writers who win and are nominated for awards lately are not writing about socialism or prison reform. They're writing about women and minorities. The only example of an award-nominated left-wing political novel focusing on economic liberalism that I can think of in recent years is Robinson's 2312, and it also had a bunch of stuff about gender in it. On the other hand there have been a host of works by Ann Leckie, Saladin Ahmed, Lavie Tidhar, et al exploring identity issues. Identity just happens to be the hot battleground issue for the left in the present political climate.
So if you were going to get mad about the left-wing slant of SF awards, would you get mad about the one socialist story or the dozens of race-and-gender stories?
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quote:Yeah, sure, except it's a case of the fringe wingnuts vs. the gradually-less-but-still-overwhelming-monolith-that-is-supported-generally-without-even-considering-there-is-a-contest. My question is 'how problematic are they'? Is there basis for making a decision good? Well, usually not, that's true. Are they the only ones in the game who make choices while consciously or unconsciously vetting their choice on a racial or gender basis?
No, but they are the ones taking part in the most vicious online attacks and lynch mobs against specific authors. Look up what happened to Tricia Sullivan's novel Shadowboxer, for example. It's a different way of being problematic than the SP people, but I would say it's quite problematic.
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quote:Again, I think you're misidentifying the group the SP people represent. They don't represent white men, they represent right-wingers. And right-wingers have been outsiders in SF since the '60s. I don't think there's anything wrong with them being outsiders. I'm glad to be a part of communities where right-wing people feel a bit unwelcome. But when they feel unwelcome, that's not just their perception. They really are not mainstream and they haven't been for a long time.
There are lots of ways to be right-wing, just as one could be called a left-winger if they were a socialist or if they believed in keeping prayer out of schools.
quote:Well, it is also true that the left-wing writers who win and are nominated for awards lately are not writing about socialism or prison reform. They're writing about women and minorities. The only example of an award-nominated left-wing political novel focusing on economic liberalism that I can think of in recent years is Robinson's 2312, and it also had a bunch of stuff about gender in it. On the other hand there have been a host of works by Ann Leckie, Saladin Ahmed, Lavie Tidhar, et al exploring identity issues. Identity just happens to be the hot battleground issue for the left in the present political climate.
So if you were going to get mad about the left-wing slant of SF awards, would you get mad about the one socialist story or the dozens of race-and-gender stories?
I would wonder if maybe this slew of awards just might have something to do with such stories not even having been possible to publish and sell until very recently, and question whether the newness of it might have as much to do with the sudden upswell as some insidious left-wing cabal.
As for what they're getting mad about...well. You've certainly landed on the most benign possible reason why people would get mad about leftist authors winning awards. 'Left-wing' is just an umbrella in any event. Right-winger angry types don't dislike left-wingers just because they're left wing (or vice versa), it's what they're left-wing *about*. Which in this case is mysteriously having to do with an increased focus* on gender and racial identity.
quote:No, but they are the ones taking part in the most vicious online attacks and lynch mobs against specific authors. Look up what happened to Tricia Sullivan's novel Shadowboxer, for example. It's a different way of being problematic than the SP people, but I would say it's quite problematic.
I just want to clarify here: is it your intention to suggest that SJW types are more active in making vicious online attacks against specific authors than attacks are made in the other direction?
*What's funny about this is that 'race-and-gender stories' are really, really often simply stories that actually address race and gender at all. All it *takes* to be a 'women's story' is if it focuses on women instead of men.
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quote:I would wonder if maybe this slew of awards just might have something to do with such stories not even having been possible to publish and sell until very recently, and question whether the newness of it might have as much to do with the sudden upswell as some insidious left-wing cabal.
I totally agree. And I think the awards and noms for the race-and-gender books have mostly been well-deserved.
quote:As for what they're getting mad about...well. You've certainly landed on the most benign possible reason why people would get mad about leftist authors winning awards
Yes, as a matter of human psychology I think the most benign explanation for why people disagree with me is usually the right one. Truly evil people are very rare.
quote:Right-winger angry types don't dislike left-wingers just because they're left wing (or vice versa), it's what they're left-wing *about*.
I think this is actually the opposite of the truth much of the time. People often form views about specific issues because it's what someone from "their team" is supposed to think. Look at the fact that conservatives weren't upset about Bush's or Reagan's spending, or the fact that liberals aren't upset about Obama's civil liberties abuses. A lot of the time it's about who you see as your political enemy, rather than what issues you disagree on.
quote:I just want to clarify here: is it your intention to suggest that SJW types are more active in making vicious online attacks against specific authors than attacks are made in the other direction?
Yes, that has been my impression the last several years, since the '09 attacks on Elizabeth Bear and Jay Lake kicked off the trend. I'm not aware of any comparable stories of right-wing SF fans mobbing authors online. Although it's possible that my "keep my own house in order" tendency to get annoyed with other leftists' excesses have led to my missing such stories.
quote:*What's funny about this is that 'race-and-gender stories' are really, really often simply stories that actually address race and gender at all. All it *takes* to be a 'women's story' is if it focuses on women instead of men.
The stories whose awards these guys are objecting to, like Ancillary Justice, are not like that at all. They are in fact message fiction, although I would say most of them are very well-done message fiction that deserves acclaim.
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quote:To clarify some things that shouldn’t matter but apparently do:
I am a socialist, if I have to quantify my political leanings. I’d vote Elizabeth Warren into the presidency if she ran, though she’s still not liberal enough for me (but she’s smart enough, too smart to run probably, hah), if that gives an idea of what I mean here.
I am queer in that I am an out bisexual who has had more female partners than male. (I am married and monogamous with a man but still identify as bi because I don’t think who I ended up in love with should matter).
I have two X chromosomes and a vagina. Also boobs. And tattoos (90 hours and counting!).
My nominated story features a non-white female protagonist. Most of my stories do, actually. I think the world is a very interesting and diverse place, I grew up in a multi-ethnic and diverse family, and I don’t see our future becoming less diverse so I choose to write about a world that has as many different people in it as I can dream up.
quote:if the Sad Puppies' goal was pushing right-wing straight male people
The Sad Puppies' goal was pushing friends of Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia, some of whom were right-wing straight males. The Rabid Puppies were about pushing right-wing straight males.
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I would be really sad too, by the way, if the official agenda of the Sad Puppies won out and the Hugos became the annual Best Lowbrow Pulp SF Award. The idea of Kevin J Anderson or Jim Butcher winning a Hugo kind of grosses me out.
Although Scalzi won a couple of years back, and he's a lowbrow pulp-writing hack extraordinaire, so maybe that ship has sailed (I almost wrote the typo "that shit has sailed," which would have been appropriate, LOL).
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I think it's worth noting Redshirts was fairly literary in its ambitions. It's essentially meaningless without the greater context of SF, especially Star Trek (TOS). It's really the kind of book I'd expect to win awards in the SF community. Far more so than his Old Man's War stories or other endeavors.
I haven't read any of Anderson's recent stuff and most of it I have was Star Wars (Darksaber *shudders*) but Butcher's Skin Game is a bloody heist story. It's not doing anything interesting at all. He should have gotten Hugo nods for Changes or Ghost Story, which were at least adventurous.
I guess it speaks to what I think should win Hugos: stories that are useful additions to the canon of SFF; whether for craft or innovation or reflection or inspiration. Not generic and not for comfort or nostalgia or politics. It's one book out of thousands, there should be a pretty solid reason why.
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I enjoyed Redshirts quite a bit, but "excessively cute" is really the only way to describe it. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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god, i forgot how much of the science fiction community is dominated by sweaty insane conservatives
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quote:George R R Martin said the Hugo awards have been dealt a mortal blow by right-wing writers after they promoted a list of their selections so successfully that they dominated the shortlist.
The campaign was started by a group calling itself Sad Puppies as they sought to right the wrong, as they saw it, of the political correctness in previous shortlists.
But the similar Rabid Puppies group, led by American author Theodore Beale, had the most success – three of the five contenders in the best novel category and all the best novella, best novelette and best short story contenders were on its slate.
Beale is notorious for his views. Discussing the black Hugo award nominee N K Jemisin, he once wrote that “it is not that I, and others, do not view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens), it is that we simply do not view her as being fully civilised for the obvious historical reason that she is not”. He also once said that American women “would do well to consider whether their much-cherished gains of the right to vote, work, murder and freely fornicate are worth destroying marriage, children, civilised Western society and little girls”.
One of the writers on the Rabid Puppies’ list, nominated six times, is John C Wright. After the TV show Legend of Korra featured a love story between women, he wrote to the programme’s creators describing them as “disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth”.
Beale insisted his campaign was about promoting “excellence in actual science fiction and fantasy”.
So basically we must constantly be reminded that this movement is actually about ethics in science fiction awards nomination
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Don't forget that a number of the nominees from the Rabid Puppies are from Castalia House, a publisher created by Theodore Beale. I would assume that he benefits financially from any increased sales that result from those nominations (and not just the ones he received as editor).
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In this case I am more than willing to give Beale the benefit of the doubt and presume for his sake that the financial incentive is purely incidental.
Generously, I can assume his intent is firmly rooted in his lunatic paranoid conservative bigotry and his desire to fight back against the rising tide of nonwhites and females and gays getting any sort of real representation to the detriment of civilization
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It feels to me like they've effectively destroyed the award. Which if that's what they wanted, congrats to them I guess?
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Is there any reason to think they won't do the same thing next year?
Seriously, dudes like Beale cannot have escaped social scorn for their views. Other than that, what else is there in response? Mustering a bigger showing in response? On what basis-an explicitly liberal progressive counterbalance?
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: In this case I am more than willing to give Beale the benefit of the doubt and presume for his sake that the financial incentive is purely incidental.
Generously, I can assume his intent is firmly rooted in his lunatic paranoid conservative bigotry and his desire to fight back against the rising tide of nonwhites and females and gays getting any sort of real representation to the detriment of civilization
That sounds right. Vox Day is a racist and sexist first, a businessman second.
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quote:Originally posted by NobleHunter: One bad year doesn't the award is dead. It's been gravely injured but can still recover.
but the whole hugos system is stupid and useless down to the very core and this whole fiasco is just the exterior product produced by that fact.
it would take about two years to even institute the minimum reforms necessary to pull the awards back from the supremely surreal and insane irrelevance that it has earned for itself this year, if even the institution is coherently willing and able to try
until then it's even safer to ignore the hugos this year than it was last year hooray
/
quote:Is there any reason to think they won't do the same thing next year?
nope, especially considering that they have expressly pledged to pull the exact same shit again
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They may be less successful next year as more fans make an effort to vote. There will certainly be efforts to reduce their prominence on the ballot (hopefully not a counter-slate). The assorted interest groups who make up the Puppies might fracture and dilute their influence, especially when the more egregious noms from the rabid side lose badly. Inshallah, Gamergate will continue to dwindle so next year's puppy slate won't have as many voters.
A year is a long time on the internet, so let's see what happens.
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While reading about all this stuff, I discovered an interesting piece of SF history... one of the rallying points for the Sad Puppies has been the Nebula win and Hugo nomination of this story, which they hate:
I was ready to be all like "those Philistines!" But actually the story is not at all to my taste, and probably shouldn't count as either SF or fantasy.
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I think it's clearly "speculative fiction," though, even if it's more of a tone poem than a story.
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quote:What's the speculative element? Dinosaurs? The narrator's imagination?
Yes, precisely. It would be unambiguously a piece of spec-fic, after all, if the narrator were in love with a dinosaur -- if the various "what-ifs" mentioned in the piece were what happened, and not merely what the narrator speculates would happen.
The piece takes away the usual frame of reference for sci-fi -- the idea that the thing being speculated about is being written as if it actually happened -- and puts it back in its place, as if the narrator were actually doing the speculating. (And, of course, the narrator and the narrative are themselves fictional; the actual author's lover was not assaulted, and the author is not imagining how differently that would have gone were her lover a dinosaur. The author, in fact, is happily married to a man.) So it's a married, heterosexual woman imagining what a nerdy lesbian mourning her lover's mugging might be thinking.
If the nerdy lesbian were also an elf, would it be a fantasy story? If her lover were being treated in a space hospital, would it be science fiction? I think it's needlessly reductive to try to nail that down. It's a story, and it's practically tautologically speculative fiction: it's literally first-person speculation about how an unusually sapient dinosaur would be perceived and received in the modern era.
I personally didn't find it all that deep or thought-provoking, but given that it's only a couple pages long I didn't really have time to get tired of the conceit, either; there have been plenty of one-note "explorations" of a given image in spec-fic that have dragged on far longer. (Asimov wrote a whole tedious story that ended with "let there be light," for example, just to get to that line.)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: [QUOTE](Asimov wrote a whole tedious story that ended with "let there be light," for example, just to get to that line.)
Weirdly enough, I read said story for the first time yesterday.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
I was annoyed by the various puppies (not annoyed enough to kick out $40 for a vote). I found a lot of the books and authors I love from the Hugo and Nebula awards, and it's unfortunate to think that the awards will be degraded in value by their nonsense.
Then it occurred to me that The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss was a novella that came out in the last year. If this book is not in the running for the award and three novellas by John C Wright are because of the puppies (maybe it just missed the cutoff date), I'll kick out the $40 next year.
Posts: 49 | Registered: Sep 2011
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posted
We also had a Sanderson Novella though that too might have missed the cut-off date. Not sure what the cut-off is. But that's two that bury anything on the list now.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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