The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Immolation for the Hugos

Posted on | August 26, 2015 | 32 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


Took me a while to get around to this post, what with all the balls in the air I have going at the moment; hell, I haven’t even been able to get an In The Mailbox post out consistently during the weekdays for Lord knows how long now. Well, one thing at a time.

Those of you who, like me, have been paying attention to the whole Hugo Awards corner of the culture war, are probably aware by now that the (mostly) old, grey and left-wing members of science fiction Fandom burned down the Hugos in order to save them* this past weekend, choosing No Award in the novella and short story categories, as well as Related Works and both Editor categories. Not coincidentally, these were categories in which the Sad Puppies and their Rabid Puppy co-belligerents had swept the nominations. These No Award votes were cheered by the assembled “Trufans”, after Toastmaster David Gerrold told the crowd that it would be impolite to boo nominees, but perfectly acceptable to cheer for No Award. The whole fiasco was preceded by a smarmy bit in which it was announced that all of this year’s Hugos would be noted with an asterisk “because of the historically high attendance and voting”.** This was well received at Sasquan, but now that the rest of fandom is aware of it, strangely enough nobody seems to want to take credit for handing out what were (not so cleverly disguised) assholes to the nominees. Leader of Sad Puppies 3 Brad Torgersen weighs in here; the International Lord of Hate was considerably more pithy but expanded on his comments. Vox Day also had some opinions; he also acknowledged Sarah Hoyt’s realization that the Rabid Puppies were the real winners at this year’s Hugos. One last taste of schadenfreude: is the reason nobody will admit to creating the Asterisks is that it may constitute a fraud against Sasquan’s members by violating the WSFS Constitution? “On to MidAmericon II!” I mumble, lighting my torch and reaching for my pitchfork…

All the Hugo Award nonsense aside, I’ve been renewing my acquaintance with some old friends this past week, which is to say I finally got my household goods out of hock and began unpacking them. Unfortunately, it seems I picked the wrong bookcase to ship here, as the second I removed the shrinkwrap and tape, it collapsed in a pile of boards and particleboard fragments. Welp. Alexis Gilliland is the kind of mid-list author who is getting a new lease on life thanks to e-publishing, and I’m glad to see The Revolution From Rosinante back on the market in a spanking-new Kindle edition with a new cover. The Rosinante trilogy is about the trials and tribulations of an asteroid habitat originally funded by a Japanese zaibatsu and SCADIWA, a Southern California water utility, in the waning days of the North American Union. Gilliland, who retired after a long career in the Department of Agriculture, knows his bureaucrats, engineers, and military men well, and the trilogy also has scheming robots, pirates, and crazed revolutionaries of several stripes just to keep it all interesting. You should definitely pick up Long Shot for Rosinante and The Pirates Of Rosinante as well, because these are slim novels that move quickly.

Also unpacked were my paperback collection of Robert Heinlein’s juveniles, many of which were first published in the Boy Scout magazine Boys’ Life. This week I browsed Starman Jones, the tale of a young country boy with an eidetic memory who wants more than anything to be a starship crewman; Citizen of the Galaxy, a tale of a slave boy on a faraway planet who proves to be [SPOILER]; Between Planets, about a teenager caught up in the revolution on Venus; and Time for the Stars, about a telepath on a torchship sent to look for Earthlike worlds, which deals with the issues of time dilation and a few other non-obvious topics.*** They’re all good reads, especially if you have young children and want something suitable.

I also sampled Keith Laumer’s The Compleat Bolo (which actually isn’t, it lacks the Retief stories “Cultural Exchange” and “Courier”) and the Baen anthologies Honor of the Regiment, The Unconquerable, The Triumphant, and Last Stand, in which modern masters of combat SF such as David Drake, David Weber, S.M. Stirling, and William Keith get a chance to spin new tales about the deadly, but utterly loyal, cybertanks that defend humanity against threats both alien and human. There are at least two more anthologies, and six new novels, but this is running long enough already.

* Note that on the official Hugo Awards site, the categories where No Award won have simply been deleted from the list of winners.
** This insult to the nominees caused Best Editor (Long Form) nominee Toni Weisskopf of Baen to storm out.
*** Oddly, not available in Kindle.


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Category: Books, Zeitgeist

Comments

32 Responses to “Immolation for the Hugos”

  1. Daniel Freeman
    August 26th, 2015 @ 1:20 am

    The CHORFs put Skin Game below No Award.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcClvRt9g2Q

  2. Fail Burton
    August 26th, 2015 @ 1:33 am

    The odd irony of posting this here is that for the past 3 years core SFF fandom has been driven almost exclusively by the mentally ill tenets of the very radical feminism Mr. McCain has been schooling us about. So-called “marginalized” women, lesbians and non-whites have acted as if all men are the Harkonnens and they are the noble Fremen whose true talents men won’t recognize. The solution of course is “diversity,” which in real world terms translates to an affirmative action movement which puts ideological lesbian world views at the top of a literary list of truly shitty stories. The shiny trick there is a thousand quotes recommending SFF by nothing but skin and sex and then when those people get nominations and other people start pointing out the affirmative action the radfems and their supporters call you a racist sexist for not imagining those stories could’ve been nominated on their merits. As in all things radfem, virtually every word out of their mouths is a paranoid irrational lie.

  3. David, internet troll
    August 26th, 2015 @ 1:34 am

    Sadly, none of the “modern masters of military science-fiction” can hold a candle to Laumer himself in terms of writing Bolo stories. I stopped reading the anthologies because they were so disappointing. They ARE masters in their own worlds, but no can replace Laumer, unfortunately. He is one of the most under-appreciated science fiction authors of the last fifty years (along with Ron Goulart).

  4. David, internet troll
    August 26th, 2015 @ 1:37 am

    Man, I worry about you. And I am not being snide or nasty, I really do worry about both you and Stacy. It CAN’T be good for your mental health to spend as much time dealing with this stuff as the two of you do. I hope that every so often you make time to go out, read a book, play some video games, whatever, to bring you back to a more pleasant reality.

  5. mole
    August 26th, 2015 @ 3:04 am

    The funny thing is one of my favorite fantasy/steampunk/science fiction writers is a bloke whos politics are anathema to me.

    Yet hes got the sense to keep any ideology in his books extremely mild or non existent.

    Yet Im able to divorce my knowing hes an avowed Marxist from my enjoyment of his work. Why do the SJWs have this mental problem where the herd must approve of an authors opinions before they can “enjoy” what they are consuming?

    Heres the chap

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville

  6. Fail Burton
    August 26th, 2015 @ 6:39 am

    People used to tell me the same thing about reading trash like Tarzan and the Ant-Men. I once read that while spending two nights alone atop a 3,500 meter volcano while the new crater at the base was in eruption. While I motorcycled completely around the island of Bali in 6 days just for a lark, I was stopping at paperback trade shops looking for geeky SFF. I read A. Merrit’s The Moon Pool while sailing 500 mi. from Belem to Santarem on an old wooden ship on the Amazon River. I discovered Game of Thrones while backpacking 5 1/2 months across southern Europe from Lisbon to Istanbul to Santorini. I remember buying Pirates of Venus in Cuzco just before I hiked the Inca Trail, etc., etc., etc.

  7. CaptDMO
    August 26th, 2015 @ 8:50 am

    Burn it down?
    Nah, Rather than a scorched earth campaign, I’m calling the SJW
    response to “Puppies” (and Gamergate)
    The Bitch (dog) in the Manger.

  8. Southern Air Pirate
    August 26th, 2015 @ 9:35 am

    So what I am gathering from this whole fiasco is that the a Hugo has become like a Newberry, Caldeott, Pulitzer, Eisner, Academy of Motion Arts, etc. The pretending blowhards who want “art” have gained control and not allowed good works that should be viewed as worthy of praise for being art and technical achievements of the artists.

  9. model217
    August 26th, 2015 @ 11:47 am

    At first I thought this was a way for authors to establish a loyal fan base. This years Hugo’s have thrown that right out the window. The meanness and vitriol by leftist authors and even Tor’s own editors have left a bad taste in my mouth that wont soon go away. I refuse to buy any Tor books or support with my money any authors that are stupid enough to vocalize their disdain for any other opinion but their own.
    I worked as a salesman,don’t piss off your customers!

  10. Daniel Freeman
    August 26th, 2015 @ 11:50 am

    It’s even worse than that. It’s not even about “art” vs. pop. Three years of Puppies in a nutshell…

    Larry Correia: “The Hugo awards have been co-opted by a small clique that puts the quality of the work beneath the politics of the work, the politics of its creator, and lobbying of insiders.”

    Insiders: “No, you’re wrong! We also put its quality beneath the politics of its nominators, and our resentment at outsiders imagining they matter.”

  11. Daniel Freeman
    August 26th, 2015 @ 11:56 am

    I never get tired of watching that video. Ninjas! A mermaid! Nazis! An astronaut! Cheerleaders! Some hot chicks having a pillow fight at a dance party in a courtroom! And that’s not all!

    “Burn It Down” is my theme song for 2016.

  12. Wombat_socho
    August 26th, 2015 @ 12:09 pm

    As much as I like Laumer, I’d have to disagree. I think Drake and Weber in particular wrote stories for the anthologies that perfectly captured the mood in “The Last Command” and “A Relic of War”, which to me are the two best Bolo stories. The anthologies do have their share of filler, but by and large, I think the wheat outweighs the chaff.

  13. Wombat_socho
    August 26th, 2015 @ 12:10 pm

    I was feeling like burning it down at first, but I’m willing to rally behind the Kindly Ones and give it another shot.

  14. Wombat_socho
    August 26th, 2015 @ 12:11 pm

    I don’t think PNH, Irene Gallo or Moshe Feder know a damn thing about sales. If they did, they would have kept their frakking mouths shut.

  15. Wombat_socho
    August 26th, 2015 @ 12:12 pm

    This is a very accurate summary.

  16. Wombat_socho
    August 26th, 2015 @ 12:14 pm

    Charles Stross, on the other hand…*sigh* I can’t help notice that his politics have become more obnoxiously apparent as the quality of his work has declined. The Amazon reviews for the latest “Laundry” novel are a catalog of disappointed readers.

  17. Southern Air Pirate
    August 26th, 2015 @ 12:21 pm

    Seriously?!?!?! Have you not watched the ways that Newberry and Caldeott voting contort and twist to award political points to books that push certain agendas. Such as transsexuals are good Christian is bad and American exceptionalism is evil. Let’s not even talk about the Academy of Motion Arts and thier twist and contortions to award or even nominate films that make the committee feel good about themselves while making a political statement at the same time.

    We are conditioned to believe that award winners are good in thier field. Except that in fields like the arts such as the Hugo. It’s all subjective and what you love, I detest to the point it makes me physically ill. The whole idea of the award in this era of so many ways to be noticed or sold should speak to its irrelevant nature. Heck why do you think that Sundance came up with an award or the Cannes award came up? It was because both Redford and Chaplin thought that the Academy sucked pigs feet through a garden hose in picking “good art” or even giving capable artists a chance to compete against the big name houses. Of course now both of them have been co-oped into the collective and become shadows of themselves both making films of differing perspectives and ideas available to just the overall rise in snobbery about who is connected to who in backing what nominations. It’s all incestuous now.

    I applaud what the folks at Baen and Correia and Torgenson are doing. Making the awards folks stand up and prove the merits of the art beyond the personal connections and party political. The problem is that the folks being protested don’t get it and why I don’t read most modern sci-fi because in some cases the heavy hands of political theory don’t make me think and make me more bored than reading Marx or Rand.

  18. Daniel Freeman
    August 26th, 2015 @ 12:48 pm

    Have you not watched the ways that Newberry and Caldeott voting contort and twist to award political points to books that push certain agendas. Such as transsexuals are good Christian is bad and American exceptionalism is evil. Let’s not even talk about the Academy of Motion Arts and thier twist and contortions to award or even nominate films
    that make the committee feel good about themselves while making a political statement at the same time.

    I have not. I only got involved with the Puppies this year because I’m a lifelong spec-fic fan, and finally heard about what was going on. Otherwise I generally ignore all kinds of awards.

  19. Southern Air Pirate
    August 26th, 2015 @ 1:18 pm

    I have only been recently paying attention to kids books for two reasons. 1. I have a relative who is a librarian and her hatred toward the ALA and other member driven library groups. She has been bashing all the recent picks because they are more political than educational. It’s funny because she is center-left, more Scoop Jackson democratic party member than what makes up the DNC or the Library clubs.
    2. I have a kid and it makes me want to find good classic books like Paddington or Harold’s purple crayon. Yet, my wife thinks that because there are books in the library or on store shelves with those medals they must be good because well awards.

    As to sci-fi, to be honest never was a big fan till I read Heinlein’s Troopers once. I mean I read Vern’s under the sea and center of the earth, as well as Well’s socialist views of the future ( everything but War of the Worlds has this view, some are heavier handed than others) and the Barsoom saga. But on a whole trying to get into modern sci-fi was a chore and some of the Silver or Golden age stuff was hard to spot “soft” from “hard” in reading it. With either dystopia futures or too much cyberpunk stuff with depression filled angsty anti-heroes in the more modern stuff. Where was the Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon types if not zooming off to save the world at least zooming off on an adventure.

  20. Daniel Freeman
    August 26th, 2015 @ 1:31 pm

    Incidentally, Vox Day’s latest non-fiction, SJWs Always Lie, has been released on Amazon a day early.

  21. David, internet troll
    August 26th, 2015 @ 2:01 pm

    Well, great. I just want you to take care of yourself. You are too valuable a member of the community to have you burn out.

  22. model217
    August 26th, 2015 @ 4:13 pm

    I enjoy reading Neal Asher even if he is an atheist with a chip on his shoulder.

  23. Daniel Freeman
    August 26th, 2015 @ 5:21 pm

    I waited almost to the deadline to vote, and I’d defected to RP by then, since I saw how VD’s suggestions were carefully designed to tease out data on groups with different motivations (and I’d say it worked).

    VD is a great strategist, and SP will apparently be run by a matriarchal triumvirate, so there is already speculation in the ranks that they could end up merging into Were-Puppies. May G-d have mercy on the SJWs’ shriveled souls.

  24. malclave
    August 26th, 2015 @ 6:24 pm

    I understand that some of the No Awarders were using the excuse that the Puppies “made them do it”.
    As I understand it, that’s a not-uncommon claim of people who abuse others. Maybe this year’s Hugos should be renamed the Breens?

  25. Wombat_socho
    August 26th, 2015 @ 11:06 pm

    Brad Torgersen lost his temper with some sore winners from File 770 and changed all their comments on one particular post to “BUT YOU MADE ME DO IT!” for that very reason. 🙂

  26. Wombat_socho
    August 26th, 2015 @ 11:07 pm

    With a foreword by Milo Yiannopolous. Might have to pick it up come payday.

  27. Wombat_socho
    August 27th, 2015 @ 12:57 am

    I’m not going to try and outthink Vox. I have the feeling that (just as he did this year) he’s going to find a way through the red tape, sucker-punch the Rabbit People, and get them to nuke most of the Hugos again in 2016 while the Furies shrug their shoulders, smile, and sneer, “Hey, we warned you.”

  28. Daniel Freeman
    August 27th, 2015 @ 3:38 am

    Apparently there is some kind of bonus if you buy through Castalia House:

    Have been a subscriber for some time now but could find nothing at the Castalia site about any special offer.

    Emails went out about an hour ago. In any event, I’ve got it set up so if you buy from CH before Saturday, you’ll get the bonus books.

  29. CaptDMO
    August 27th, 2015 @ 5:18 am

    IT DOESN’T COUNT (yet)
    Until it’s in dead tree print!
    (damned kids these days, GET OFF of MY LAWN!)

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