Saturday Book Discussion: So, how about those Hugos?

[inverarity]

The 2014 Hugos will be awarded at WorldCon in London, August 14-18.

The 2014 Hugo Finalists
You may have heard there is some controversy this year, over the "Sad Puppies" slate of nominees promoted by Larry Correia and Vox Day. For those unaware of said controversy, Larry Correia (author of the popular "Monster Hunter" and Grimnoir Chronicles"

Comments

[l_o_lostshadows]

I think less people would have exploded the way they did if the Correia slate had been presented as "here are some works I feel are worthy, but I suspect will be overlooked because of the writer" rather than "here's a bunch of eligible works that will annoy people." It was a bad idea for forming the list in the first place, and the results are predictable.

From what I've seen from excerpts of his story, I think there's very little chance Vox Day will win based on writing ability.

[inverarity]

I think the Correia camp was trying to bait people, but it does seem that the stories were nominated by genuine fans. Correia is very popular and his Grimnoir Chronicles aren't bad. All the other authors on the "Sad Puppies" slate do have loyal followings. So wanting to piss off the fandom and wanting to see authors they like get Hugos are not mutually exclusive.

[l_o_lostshadows]

If he actually wants these things to win, he picked the worst way to go about it. Guaranteeing that a larger number of people will give a knee-jerk "no vote" to something you think deserves a Hugo seems counterproductive.

[paulliver]

While I agree that conservative authors should have an equal shot at Hugos, "not bad" doesn't cut it when we are talking about winning awards.

[silverflight8]

Personally, I wash my hands of sf/f author stuff. I don't want to know. I'm not here for the authors anyway. And increasingly to me the awards seem to be popularity contests, and those are really not my thing.

But I think I don't want to pick up anything by Vox Day (crazypants) and Correia (sounds like he has the emotional maturity of a toddler) since I'm kind of doubtful they would be able to write anything decent.

[paulliver]

I agree about not wanting to know much about authors' personal lives and there's little I'd want to know about their political beliefs. I stopped reading two authors because their political beliefs seemed to contradict their novels, and I stopped reading another author's blog because he kept writing about football.

Now if someone wrote a "non-fiction" book about how divorce = going to hell and had a secret ex-wife, that I would want to know about.

[asher63]

I don't know Correia personally, though he is a friend of a friend.

I think this is a good example of how illiberal "liberalism" has become.

[admnaismith]

Heh. Oh, right--the Sad Puppies. I thought "the controversy" meant how Orbit was refusing to include their works (three of the Best Novel nominees) in the Hugo packet. The Sad Puppy controversy is SO April 2014! We're mad at greedy short-sighted publishers now

[hibiscusrose]

Can't comment on the Hugo controversy itself, as I'm not a voter and only heard a little bit before reading this. In fact, another blogger referenced Vox Day and I had to look him, having never heard of him. But I can tell you, having read over Vox's blog, I would never read anything by him. Don't think I've ever heard of Correia, so can't say anything either way

[paulliver]

My father had a policy of letting his kids read any book they want, and he is pretty happy with the results.

And artists are, in general, a temperamental lot. It's probably why when I was researching a lecture on literature I was actually impressed when some literary writers managed to have more published novels than ex-wives.

[little_e_]

"And as for the moderates getting tromped on--well, all I can say is that I noticed several years ago it didn't pay to be middle of the road in an Internet discussion. Both sides generally jump on you, spiked shoes first. Really, too bad. Common sense was the first casualty."

A great observation.