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

[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!

When the Sad Puppy thing happened, my first reaction was a plague-on-both-your-houses thing. The people proclaiming hatred of books without having read them was stupid, of course, and Correia deserves everything he gets.

The way I see it, I like a lot of Woody Allen movies, and am willing to overlook his personal scandals to enjoy Annie Hall. I'm not alone in this. On the other hand, if Allen campaigned to win a film award on the grounds that he was the pro-statutory-rape candidate for that award and people should send a message in favor of creepy sex perverts by choosing him, no one would want to vote for him. That's what Correia did. He's called himself the Movement Conservative candidate for Hugo and so to Hell with the merits of his book. He WANTS it that way.

If the Oscars were by popular vote, maybe they'd promote "the Conservative candidate for Best Cinematography".

So far I've read Parasite (good, but not as good as the Newsflesh books, IMO), and the two precursors to Warbound (if it's anything like the first two, it's like nominating a Schwarzenegger action movie for an Oscar). I expect I'll read some but not all of Wheel of Time (completely new to me) as well as the other stand-alone books.