I read this and I frankly wonder if we're looking at the same reality. Chaos Horizon did an in-depth analysis of the voting data. Scrolling down towards the bottom, one finds that "Core Rabid Puppies: 550-525 (9.2% - 8.9%, using 5950 total votes for percentage) Core Sad Puppies: 500-400 (8.4% - 6.7%, using 5950 total votes for percentage)."
This is consistent with the 9.5% nomination-stage voting. In short, Sad & Rabid are not a majority, but a small minority of fandom. To say the Puppies recruited "thousands" of people is simply wrong. They recruited in total maybe a thousand. The "alphas" of SF recruited over 4,000.
The small Puppy minority nominated a slate of mediocre (at best) works, which caused this Hugo voter to No Award a lot of the ballot. (You can look at my Hugo voting here.) If, as a Hugo voter, one thinks none or most of the works nominated are not worthy of a Hugo, then the only option (and one explicitly allowed in the rules) is to vote No Award. This does not "prove" conspiracy or corruption, unless you thinks every election in which your side is badly defeated is corrupt.
I don't know what Correia's sales are. I do know John Scalzi did not get a $3.4 million advance because he didn't sell books. Wright is published by Tor (of New York fame). Correia and Torgersen were both nominated for Campbells as new writers. Arguing that libertarians are somehow excluded from SF appears to me to be factually wrong.
I hope this doesn't come across as harsh, but rather as an analysis of fact.
First point: Do not use scare quotes in my comments section. Period.
The total number of Puppy supporters is greater than the number of Puppies who nominated, I'd say by two to one. Winning the Hugos was not the core mission of the Puppies. Expanding the nominating/voting base was. The base got expanded. Burning the awards down didn't change that.
The Insider Alphas really are alphas in the tribal sense, in that they tell the lower-ranked tribe members what to do, and those members do what they are told. There were plenty of posts encouraging people to vote No Award for anything present on the Puppy lists, whether people had read them or not. There were online guides instructing people how to do this. I consider this unsurprising, given the tribal nature of fandom. The No Award sweep was not a judgment based on the quality of the stories. It was a directive handed down from On High.
Scalzi is very thick with Tor insiders. Redshirts was at best a so-so novel, basically fanfic, or maybe (being charitable) a sendup of fanfic. (I kept waiting for it to be funny. I waited a lot.) I see no way for it to win the most prestigious of the Hugo lineup without logrolling via some very big logs. Much has been written about this; google around.
I've been called a fascist and a moral coward for not kowtowing to your Insider Alphas. I have personal experience (which I will not share for the time being) indicating that libertarian fiction is unwelcome at the big houses. I've spoken with other authors who have had the same experience.
Then there was Irene Gallo. And the little wooden assholes that popped up at the ceremony. And other experiences I've had down the years that gradually soured me on cons and rubbing elbows with twitchy, hate-filled people. Lurking on Making Light is a frightening experience unless you're a card-carrying member of the hugbox. The civility and friendship I experienced at cons in the 70s and early 80s started to curdle in the mid-80s, and I was basically done with cons by 1990. I've been to as many cons in the 25 years since as I used to attend every year in the 70s. I'm ready for a new fandom, let me tell you.
So am I an Insider Alpha or a lower-ranked tribal member who does what I am told? Personally, I think I'm neither - I think I am just a fan who, when handed a slate of crappy writing, voted on it accordingly.
I No Awarded the entire Best Related category, and No Award was very high in my ballot on a number of other categories. I felt that the more serious harm to the Hugos would come from awarding a Hugo to crap writing as opposed to simply not awarding a Hugo. Kevin Standlee's online guide was posted because he was asked by multiple people to explain how No Award worked.
I can tell you exactly how Redshirts won the Hugo - it was a very popular work, and appeared in 2nd or 3rd place on a lot of ballots (like mine, I think). Since there was no clear front-runner that year, the consensus candidate won. I can assure you the only person who asked for me to vote for Redshirts was Scalzi, via his blog. If any logs were rolled, they weren't rolled around me.
Irene Gallo: it is indisputable that one end of the Puppies, the Vox Day end, is led by a racist and sexist man. He (VD) explicitly told me on his blog that women shouldn't be allowed to vote. Irene should have been more clear in distinguishing the Sads from the Rabids, but it was, after all, an off-hand comment, not a considered remark.
The total number of Puppy supporters is 1,050, using the analysis I quoted above. Again from the above analysis, there were 4,900 non-Puppy voters. In short, based on simple math, the two parts to the Hugo electorate are growing at the same rate - a rate that is 80%+ non-Puppy. I also find it hard to argue that Tor somehow controls almost 5,000 people.
Core Sad Puppies: 500-400 (8.4% - 6.7%, using 5950 total votes for percentage)."
This is consistent with the 9.5% nomination-stage voting. In short, Sad & Rabid are not a majority, but a small minority of fandom. To say the Puppies recruited "thousands" of people is simply wrong. They recruited in total maybe a thousand. The "alphas" of SF recruited over 4,000.
The small Puppy minority nominated a slate of mediocre (at best) works, which caused this Hugo voter to No Award a lot of the ballot. (You can look at my Hugo voting here.) If, as a Hugo voter, one thinks none or most of the works nominated are not worthy of a Hugo, then the only option (and one explicitly allowed in the rules) is to vote No Award. This does not "prove" conspiracy or corruption, unless you thinks every election in which your side is badly defeated is corrupt.
I don't know what Correia's sales are. I do know John Scalzi did not get a $3.4 million advance because he didn't sell books. Wright is published by Tor (of New York fame). Correia and Torgersen were both nominated for Campbells as new writers. Arguing that libertarians are somehow excluded from SF appears to me to be factually wrong.
I hope this doesn't come across as harsh, but rather as an analysis of fact.
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The total number of Puppy supporters is greater than the number of Puppies who nominated, I'd say by two to one. Winning the Hugos was not the core mission of the Puppies. Expanding the nominating/voting base was. The base got expanded. Burning the awards down didn't change that.
The Insider Alphas really are alphas in the tribal sense, in that they tell the lower-ranked tribe members what to do, and those members do what they are told. There were plenty of posts encouraging people to vote No Award for anything present on the Puppy lists, whether people had read them or not. There were online guides instructing people how to do this. I consider this unsurprising, given the tribal nature of fandom. The No Award sweep was not a judgment based on the quality of the stories. It was a directive handed down from On High.
Scalzi is very thick with Tor insiders. Redshirts was at best a so-so novel, basically fanfic, or maybe (being charitable) a sendup of fanfic. (I kept waiting for it to be funny. I waited a lot.) I see no way for it to win the most prestigious of the Hugo lineup without logrolling via some very big logs. Much has been written about this; google around.
I've been called a fascist and a moral coward for not kowtowing to your Insider Alphas. I have personal experience (which I will not share for the time being) indicating that libertarian fiction is unwelcome at the big houses. I've spoken with other authors who have had the same experience.
Then there was Irene Gallo. And the little wooden assholes that popped up at the ceremony. And other experiences I've had down the years that gradually soured me on cons and rubbing elbows with twitchy, hate-filled people. Lurking on Making Light is a frightening experience unless you're a card-carrying member of the hugbox. The civility and friendship I experienced at cons in the 70s and early 80s started to curdle in the mid-80s, and I was basically done with cons by 1990. I've been to as many cons in the 25 years since as I used to attend every year in the 70s. I'm ready for a new fandom, let me tell you.
Reply
So am I an Insider Alpha or a lower-ranked tribal member who does what I am told? Personally, I think I'm neither - I think I am just a fan who, when handed a slate of crappy writing, voted on it accordingly.
I No Awarded the entire Best Related category, and No Award was very high in my ballot on a number of other categories. I felt that the more serious harm to the Hugos would come from awarding a Hugo to crap writing as opposed to simply not awarding a Hugo. Kevin Standlee's online guide was posted because he was asked by multiple people to explain how No Award worked.
I can tell you exactly how Redshirts won the Hugo - it was a very popular work, and appeared in 2nd or 3rd place on a lot of ballots (like mine, I think). Since there was no clear front-runner that year, the consensus candidate won. I can assure you the only person who asked for me to vote for Redshirts was Scalzi, via his blog. If any logs were rolled, they weren't rolled around me.
Irene Gallo: it is indisputable that one end of the Puppies, the Vox Day end, is led by a racist and sexist man. He (VD) explicitly told me on his blog that women shouldn't be allowed to vote. Irene should have been more clear in distinguishing the Sads from the Rabids, but it was, after all, an off-hand comment, not a considered remark.
The total number of Puppy supporters is 1,050, using the analysis I quoted above. Again from the above analysis, there were 4,900 non-Puppy voters. In short, based on simple math, the two parts to the Hugo electorate are growing at the same rate - a rate that is 80%+ non-Puppy. I also find it hard to argue that Tor somehow controls almost 5,000 people.
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