Foolishly jumping into the Hugos mishegas

[ianrandalstrock]

I told myself I wasn't going to get involved. I don't have the time or interest to argue Hugo rules. But enough of my friends are involved in the current debate that I keep hearing about it, so I have formed an opinion, which I want to share

Comments

[mabfan]

I've shared your post as a link on Facebook. This should be read widely and pondered.

[ianrandalstrock]

Thanks, Michael.

[sethg_prime]

I strongly disagree.

Organized political parties become necessary in politics because the government cannot simultaneously raise and lower taxes. (OK, the government can raise taxes for some people and lower them for others, but you know what I mean.) So it’s natural for politicians to organize themselves into rival parties, one of which has a “raise taxes” platform and one of which has a “lower taxes” platform. From a voter’s point of view, as long as the politicians keep their pants on and aren’t caught taking bribes, the platforms they represent matter far more than anything else. If your guys win the election, taxes go the way you want, and you can be happy; if the other guys win the election, taxes go the way you don’t want, and you can try harder to win next time.

But in voting for a literary award, I can simultaneously like space operas and sparkly-vampire novels. I can choose a space opera as Best Novel one year and a sparkly-vampire novel the next year. I can say “I usually hate sparkly-vampire novels, but this one is the

[ianrandalstrock]

I didn't say you'd like the outcome. I said those who place value on the award and can convince others that working together means they can get the award for their chosen nominee will have more power than a bunch of uncoordinated individuals who vote for what they like. It's not that those who want their taxes to go up and those who want them to go down represent the entirety of the populace; it's that about 40% of the voters have decided the Democratic Party (mostly) represents their views, while another 40% feel that way about the Republican Party, and so those two Parties can maintain control in a two-party system. As for the final 20%, they're sometimes called the swing voters or the deciders, but their opinions don't matter, because they don't align with one of the two major parties. In the Hugos world, after the formation of the Puppies Party, I expect there will form another party on the other side of the issue (I leave it up to you to decide what precisely that issue is), and the adherents of those two philosophies (the

[sethg_prime]

The thing is, if the award is seen as being merely the outcome of a tug-of-war between political factions, it loses its prestige value, which is really the only value it has. (If you get elected President, regardless of who you stabbed in the back to get there, you can live in a nice big house and get to invade countries you don’t like and fun stuff like that. If you get a Hugo... not so much.) So even people who would otherwise agree with the values of the X Party have an incentive not to affiliate themselves with the X Party Slate. Note that several of the authors invited to join the Puppies slate declined, and several others have asked to be delisted from the ballot.

Vox Day, he of he Rabid Puppies faction, has said that he wants to burn down the Hugos, not win them. So none of these incentives apply to him and his comrades.

[bugsybanana]

The advent of "faction" in the late-18th century US is the analogy I've kicked around in my head. Where I think the Sad Puppies (and the Rabid Puppies even moreso) are different is that they'd be just as happy to ruin the Hugos as an institution as take them over. Are you familiar with recent political events in Hungary? The Puppies feel to me less like SF's Democratic-Republicans as like SF's Fidesz and Jobbik.

[ianrandalstrock]

Sorry to say I haven't been paying much attention to Hungary recently. But based on your comment (and others I've seen), many people are equating the Puppies Party to the bandit in Alfred's story in "The Dark Knight." He'd been fighting in the jungles in southeast Asia, paying people with gems, and there was a bandit, stealing the gems. They couldn't defeat or even find the bandit, and then one day realized he was just throwing/giving the gems away. They realized the bandit wasn't fighting the same war they were; he just wanted to see the world burn. My point is not that the Puppies Party may want to see the Hugos burn, but more that the introduction of political organization into a formerly unorganized (and thus, apparently idyllic) situation can easily look like an attempt to destroy the world. Their goal may be destruction, or it may simply be a power grab, but bemoaning their existence will not stop either goal. Only counter-organization will be able to do so with some hope of saving the underlying structure.

[richardthe23rd]

Oh, surely there is a faction in US politics which would be just as happy destroying the institution.

[rinolj]

I can only say: welcome to party politicsThe Federalists and Democrat-Republicans were an unanticipated emergent effect of the use of first-past-the-post, winner take all voting systems used (as far as I can recall) everywhere in the new republic. Which effect is still with us for the greater part. There are measures in some places to reduce the polarising effect, like my native state of California's top-two runoff elections of recent years

[rinolj]

Oh, I forgot to add: Hugo nominations are a first-past-the-post, winner take all voting system that traditionally has had low turnout and where the price of admission is only two US $20 bills for supporting Worldcon memberships. The low nominations turnout is the other crucial factor that made this one-time exploit possible. For various reasons, around half or fewer habitual Hugo voters have seemed to bother with the nominations election, at least in recent years. (I could swear it was lower than that, but a check of two recent Worldcons says half.)

The 2011 Worldcon in Reno recorded 2100 valid final ballots. There were 1006 valid nominating votes before that.

The 2014 Worldcon in London (one of the largest recent Worldcons) recorded 3137* valid final ballots, There were 1923 valid nominating votes before that.

* I'm going by Best Novel numbers. The London Worldcon's Hugo Administrators don't appear to have revealed the total number of valid final ballots as such, but it surely is right in that ballpark.

[vincent_d]

Loncon 3 had 3,587 valid voting ballots.
(It's on the front page of the www.loncon3.org site at the top of the list of Hugo winners.)