quote:*blink* Is there anyone on Earth who really, truly believes that the Hugos are reliably awarded to the works with the most literary merit in a given category? Or who thinks that "literary merit" is something that voters can use a consistent metric to determine?
No, but that's the ideal, and the more the voters depart from the ideal, the more they are messing up the award. It used to be more based on literary merit than it is now, in my opinion.
quote:And yet, you'll notice, those things did not actually happen to Elizabeth Bear.
Except the part about the months of hellish stress.
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It's worth noting that there's almost always been disagreement about what constitutes "literary merit".
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Of course. But no sane person would say that literary merit depends on the author's party affiliation.
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quote:But no sane person would say that literary merit depends on the author's party affiliation.
Interestingly, though, I think a lot of people would say that "literary merit" often does depend upon the author's choice of subject matter and willingness to challenge or rethink orthodoxy. Certainly in spec fic.
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That's my view as well! But I think we're also getting to the point in Western culture where some of the orthodoxies that might be worth challenging are left-wing orthodoxies (including ones that I myself agree with).
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quote:Originally posted by Destineer: That's my view as well! But I think we're also getting to the point in Western culture where some of the orthodoxies that might be worth challenging are left-wing orthodoxies (including ones that I myself agree with).
If by "Western culture" you mean Tumblr, then we're in full agreement. If you mean anything else, you must be from a parallel universe.
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as is the case when OSC occasionally goes on rants about the "politically correct inquisition", I often wonder what sort of uber-liberal microcosm one must exist in that that imagining remotely intersects with reality. I'm imagining, like, a Freshman Art Appreciation class at UCLA writ large or something.
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Oh, I have met these people. They live on the Facebook alum group for my college. The tough thing about is that they aren't necessarily wrong in many of their opinions, including the one where telling someone who is airing a serious greivance is being rude distracts from the larger issue presented, and is hurtful for that person (aka tone policing). However, they don't always seem to understand that you will go a lot a further if you treat someone who is wrong with dignity, or that just because they are on the side of angels, doesn't mean they can't be a jerk. On the other hand, people should be respected, and a lot of horrible (racist, sexist, homophobic, trasphobic, anti-semetic) things have been said that prevent people from feeling like they belong to the group. And it is worth pointing out, that many minority groups have to worry for their personal safety in ways the majority never notice (privilege). The number of horrible people is as small as the number of consistent jerks, but it makes for a rather large amount of drama.
I think the puppies might have had a better time pushing their agenda if they made it entirely about the stories they liked, and not the ones they didn't.
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: as is the case when OSC occasionally goes on rants about the "politically correct inquisition", I often wonder what sort of uber-liberal microcosm one must exist in that that imagining remotely intersects with reality. I'm imagining, like, a Freshman Art Appreciation class at UCLA writ large or something.
What I'm getting out of this, is that I should read "The Three Body Problem".
Well I still haven't read it due to the issues I mentioned earlier but I thought I would honor Marko Kloos' (Kloos's?) stand of withdrawing from the nomination by reading his series. I got tired of this kind of military scifi years ago but I quite enjoyed it. Definitely NOT Hugo worthy IMO but still an enjoyable read. A fast read too. I read all three books in 2 1/2 days.
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I had trouble getting into the Three Body Problem too... read the Kindle preview of it and found it very info-dumpy, with extremely clunky dialogue.
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: as is the case when OSC occasionally goes on rants about the "politically correct inquisition", I often wonder what sort of uber-liberal microcosm one must exist in that that imagining remotely intersects with reality. I'm imagining, like, a Freshman Art Appreciation class at UCLA writ large or something.
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I did read Ancillary Justice while waiting for the Three Body Problem to come in from the library. There was a ship on the cover. The main character is a ship. SF isn't dead.
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quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz: I did read Ancillary Justice while waiting for the Three Body Problem to come in from the library. There was a ship on the cover. The main character is a ship. SF isn't dead.
Yeah but, but, but, there were no "he"s in it.
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I thought that was an excellent book, and the way it handled gender was very interesting (although perhaps Breq's bumbling with it was a bit too exaggerated). It also did fun things with POV without messing up, as well as cognitive dissonance.
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As a machine though, I'd expect Breq not to get it. I think she notes that even the Radch, who don't distinguish in language still know. It sort of reminds me of learning French and German, where inanimate objects have gender, all of the natives just know it, it's not intuitively obvious, an object's gender differs between languages, there are good cues from the way the word sounds, but there are exceptions (even in Spanish, were it's obvious with the o/a thing, unless the word is el agua).
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