Hugos 2015

Manach

The Worldcon shortlist has been announced covering the entries for this year.

For the novels:
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
Lines of Departure, Marko Kloos (47North)
Skin Game, Jim Butcher (Roc Books)

A full list is at: http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/


The awards themselves are due to be held in Aug 2015.

pH

sadpuppies and much salt.

What Sci-Fi fandom had become on many sites is not something which interests me in any form.

Trojan

pH wrote: »

sadpuppies and much salt.

What Sci-Fi fandom had become on many sites is not something which interests me in any form.

I hadn't a clue what this was about until I read GRRM's blog. A very sad state of affairs.

Ironically (for me), my sf reading taste is very much in the Sad Puppies arena - swash-buckling space opera. I don't at all agree with their politics.

pH

Trojan wrote: »

I hadn't a clue what this was about until I read GRRM's blog. A very sad state of affairs.

Ironically (for me), my sf reading taste is very much in the Sad Puppies arena - swash-buckling space opera. I don't at all agree with their politics.

Oh screw their politics - it's gamergate all over again - nasty smears by people for who anything against their view of the world is automatically "sexism" and "racism" when it's got nothing to do with that. Those opposed to the puppies have smeared them in the most disgusting ways and the press and GRR have parroted it all.

Sad puppies basically said "The Hugo awards have been taken over by a leftist SJW clique for whom politics and who the author is - is far more important than the quality of the work". He was told he was a liar, so he attempted to get works nominated by people who aren't in the "in crowd" and judging by the hysterical outcry he was right.

Look I've read 2 1/2 of the last Hugo winners - "Among others" as Ok, redshirts was downright awful and ancillary justice in unreadable political twaddle than I couldn't finish. If the Hugos are an award pretending to be for the best sci-fi of the year then that's what it should be - if people want an award for left leaning polical commentary wrapped up in "sci-fi" then they can have that = no one is objecting to that - people are objecting to the fact that they want these awards to be political but pretend that it's for the best sci-fi.

GRR Martin is a disgrace, why he's defending these people is beyond me, he's exactly the kind of author "white old and male" writing exactly the kind of fiction "non political" that doesn't have a hope of winning anything without sad puppies.

go read this:
http://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/

That a worthy nominee for the year's best Sci-fi fantasy?

Trojan

pH wrote: »

go read this:
http://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/

That a worthy nominee for the year's best Sci-fi fantasy?

Not my kinda thing. I don't see it mentioned anywhere on this page though.

pH

Trojan wrote: »

Not my kinda thing. I don't see it mentioned anywhere on this page though.

well duh!

It's the type of thing that was being nominated before the sad puppies slate. That was from 2014 - this year the sad puppies slate has meant a lot of that type of stuff hasn't gotten through.

And whether its your type of stuff or not, you perhaps have an opinion if it was nominated because of the fact it was a great piece of sci-fi fantasy writing or whether it was because as a trangender revenge fantasy against men it hit all the right notes.

Trojan

pH wrote: »

well duh!

It's the type of thing that was being nominated before the sad puppies slate. That was from 2014 - this year the sad puppies slate has meant a lot of that type of stuff hasn't gotten through.

But don't you see, you've just proven GRRM's position 100% correct: when actual facts are questioned they don't seem to bear up the Sad Puppies' case.

pH wrote: »

And whether its your type of stuff or not, you perhaps have an opinion if it was nominated because of the fact it was a great piece of sci-fi fantasy writing or whether it was because as a trangender revenge fantasy against men it hit all the right notes.

If that piece you linked was nominated I'd still have the same opinion and if I were a Hugo voter I'd 100% be voting against it. It just isn't the kind of thing I like reading.

Neither is Erikson's Malazan (too brain taxing), Stephen Baxter (too far toward the 'hard' end of sf spectrum) or Dan Simmons (not sure how to describe the issue but I could barely finished Hyperion - I like me some more straight forward stuff).

pH

Trojan wrote: »

But don't you see, you've just proven GRRM's position 100% correct: when actual facts are questioned they don't seem to bear up the Sad Puppies' case.

You what?

This year there is a lot of Sci-Fi nominated from the sad puppies slate, quite a bit of gender and racial diversity among the authors and yet the in crowd are throwing a fit, threatening "No awards" because they'd rather "nothing" won than something that didn't fit their political ideology.

Coupled with this we saw a number of slanderous hit pieces simultaneously in the press, the most egregious being entertainment weekly's, who that claimed that the sad puppies where only nominating "white males"

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/04/11/media-drops-the-ball-on-hugoawards-sadpuppies/

Trojan

Some further reading on this:

Larry Correia, the Sad Puppies founder open letter to SMOFS, moderates and fence sitters.

Matthew David Surridge, an author given a Hugo nomination for this year’s Best Fan Writer award by Sad Puppies writes (in great detail) why he declined the nomination.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this whole mess.

pH

This is what an unbiased article on the subject looks like.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/revenge-nerds_921774.html?page=1

BlaasForRafa

pH wrote: »

This is what an unbiased article on the subject looks like.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/revenge-nerds_921774.html?page=1

Unbiased? Really?

It seems like a bunch of while male right-wing christians are butthurt that they're no longer the centre of the universe...as it were.

I can't say the other side are too appealing either, voting for a work because of the authors ethnicity or sexuality rather than the quality of the work does the awards no favours either.

I was reading through George RR Martin's blog postings about the issue and he brought up a name I had ignored for a few years http://grrm.livejournal.com/419232.html , a blogger who went by the name Requires Hate (and a few other pseudonyms), I recall reading that blog a few years ago and being astonished at the virulent hatred that spewed forth from it, basically anyone who was lesbian and "of colour" was brilliant and anyone who wasn't could go and die, especially anyone who was white and male.

Which all goes to show that the internet ruins everything basically :pac:


But seriously, politicizing a science fiction book award has to be the stupidest thing I've seen in a while.

laoch na mona

so it's gamergate mark 2, a bunch of angry basement dwellers venting their wrath, now I'm not big into fandom so it wasn't until today I heard about this. It's ridiculous to say the least hopefully more casual readers like me wont be to disturbed by this attempted neck beard take over

Manach

On topic:
Update to Novels list
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
Skin Game, Jim Butcher (Orbit UK/Roc Books)
The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu translator (Tor Books)

[The Three Body Problem being a replacement for Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos]


Off Topic:
Brad Torgensen (Sad Puppies 3 organiser) on the issue and various blow-back from the progressive side of the fan-base:https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/

BlaasForRafa

Manach wrote: »

Off Topic:
Brad Torgensen (Sad Puppies 3 organiser) on the issue and various blow-back from the progressive side of the fan-base:https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/

That guy seriously needs a lesson in brevity.

RDM_83 again

I like some "literature" science fiction, "Life during war time" is a fave and its good to see a diverse protagonists and a counter point to the american libertarianism of a lot of American Sci-Fi espouses e.g "The Iron Council".
But these are good books and stand on their own merit, something like Scalzi's stuff or other nominations just weren't works that deserved to win.
In a way this whole mess (which I didn't know about at the time) while sort of sad should be a good thing, as a reader the quality of works that I noticed were hugo winner or nominees over the last few years was pretty poor and if it had continued down that path I would have probably just started ignoring it hopefully the push against the block voting doesn't mean a reversion back to the previous recent form but a more apolitical merit based approach.
It would be a shame if something like Enders Game was released today and didn't get the recognition it deserved because of politics or what the author said, at the same time Sci-Fi was never just Heinlen etc, Octavia Butler was writing good books decades and decades ago.

pH

Yea - Sci-Fi/Fantasy has always had a diverse group of authors, people like Ursula le Guin and Anne McCaffery and Robin Hobb to name but 3 have been popular and have won prizes. A group of modern self-appointed arbiters of taste have now decided that not only should their politics and interests be represented in Sci-fi (they should) but they want all others excluded.

Has anyone actually read Ann Leckie's "Hugo Winning" work and actually enjoyed it?

This is the "award" which I think best reflects my taste at the moment
https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-science-fiction-books-2013
https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-science-fiction-books-2014

it's 100 times more representative, diverse, and interesting then the current Hugos, they're pretty much dead now, what a gang of american blue rinse progressives who attend a conference vote on is irrelevant to me. I support the puppies trolling these morons for another couple of years for the lulz, but a hugo nom or award pretty much puts a book straight on my no read list.

mcgovern

pH wrote: »

Has anyone actually read Ann Leckie's "Hugo Winning" work and actually enjoyed it?

I read the first book in the series, it wasn't bad, not as good as the hype makes out.

ixoy

pH wrote: »

Has anyone actually read Ann Leckie's "Hugo Winning" work and actually enjoyed it?

I liked the first and thought the second was boring. Lots of novels I'd put ahead of it in a given year based on pure enjoyment.
I followed the controversy a bit but I found it eventually too irritating. There was a bit of a "holier-than-thou" attitude alright.

Trojan

Ok, I'm starting Ancillary Justice. Send in a search party if you don't hear from me in 48 hours.