Arts & Letters

To paraphrase Newton’s third law of motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s one of the basic tenets of classical mechanics and it has analogues in other scientific fields. For instance, in chemistry, Le Chatelier’s principle indicates how a chemical equilibrium responds to a change in conditions by adjusting itself to account for the difference. In biology, you have Homeostasis. And so on. For the most part, these principles are stable and predictable, but when you raise the complexity, they start to break down.

In physics, Newton’s third law appears to fail in situations guided by quantum mechanics. Predictions become probabalistic instead of deterministic. As systems get more complex, their function gets more difficult to predict, and can even start to counteract the effect they were put in place to address. Humorist John Gall generalized Le Chatelier’s principle to say that “Any change in the status quo prompts an opposing reaction in the responding system” or, more humorously, “Systems tend to oppose their own proper function.”

Examples abound. Over-the-counter nasal docongestant sprays are effective… for about 3 days. After that, the user’s continuing stuffiness and congestion are actually caused by the product itself, something called a rebound congestion.

Once you enter even more complex realms like psychology and sociology, forget about it. These systems don’t even pretend to be predictable. Take the political movement of Liberalism, as Chris Wenham explains:

Each of the major political movements active today have changed drastically from what they were a few centuries ago. What was called Neoliberalism, for example, whose economic policies of laissez-faire, deregulation, low taxes and restricted monetary supply are now more closely associated with neoconservatism, or just “conservatism” in general. Or how modern Liberals are now said to be in favor of big government and managed economies, while Classical Liberalism, from the time of John Locke and Adam Smith, is about the opposite.

The point here, which Wenham observers, is that:

Engineers have long noted a tendency for complex systems to grow and evolve until they perform the opposite of what they were built for.

He goes on to comment on a frankly bizarre argument against Intellectual Property that compares it to human slavery, but the general idea of a system that opposes what it was built for is a fascinating one that has a basis in scientific fact, and seems to crop up just about everywhere.

An example of this in sociology is known as the Streisand Effect. This is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to suppress a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely. It is named after Barbra Streisand, who mounted a failed attempt to sue a photographer that had released a collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs (meant to document coastal erosion) that happened to include a photograph of Streisand’s beachside house. Before the lawsuit, the photo in question had been downloaded a total of 6 times (2 of which were by Streisand’s lawyers). In the month following the lawsuit, the photo was downloaded 420,000 times. And some dude from Techdirt coined the phrase Streisand Effect to illustrate the ironic folly of such situations. Somehow, I don’t think this is the outcome Streisand was hoping for.

If you’ve been following along with the current Hugo Awards imbroglio, you can probably see where I’m going with this. A few years ago, an author named Larry Correia, became convinced that the Hugo Awards had become insular and dominated by a left-wing ideology, along with its associated, depressing literary fiction tropes. So he began an effort to counter this perceived imbalanced in Science Fiction’s most prestigious award. He called this campaign Sad Puppies (because depressing SF is a leading cause of puppy related sadness), and so far, we have seen three different iterations of the Sad Puppies campaign.

The first was low key and did not gain much traction, so I will not spend much time on that. The second was significantly more successful… from Correia’s point of view. I suppose some background is in order. In 2011, a freshly minted Correia was actually nominated for a Campbell Award for Best New Writer (not technically a Hugo, but administered as part of the same process). Correia recently explained his experience:

So I went out on the internet and started searching my name, trying to find out what the buzz was for the Campbell nominees. I started calling friends who belonged to various writer forums and organizations that I didn’t belong to, asking about what people thought of my books in there.

You know what I found? WorldCon voters angry that a right-wing Republican (actually I’m a libertarian) who owned a gun store (gasp) was nominated for the prestigious Campbell. This is terrible. Did you know he did lobbying for gun rights! It’s right there on his hateful blog of hatey hate hate! He’s awful. He’s a bad person. He’s a Mormon! What! Another damned Mormon! Oh no, there are two Mormons up for the Campbell? I bet Larry Correia hates women and gays. He’s probably a racist too. Did you know he’s part of the evil military industrial complex? What a jerk.

Meanwhile, I’m like, but did they like my books?

No. Hardly any of them had actually read my books yet. Many were proud to brag about how they wouldn’t read my books, because badthink, and you shouldn’t have to read books that you know are going to make you angry. A handful of people claimed to have my read my books, but they assured the others that they were safe to put me last, because as expected for a shit person, my words were shit, and so they were good people to treat me like shit.

Regardless of what you think of Correia or actually believe these things happened to him, I think you can see why he feels the way he does. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Correia launched Sad Puppies with the explicit purpose of getting authors with the “wrong” politics on the ballot so that the world could see the response.

Sad Puppies 2 was pretty successful in that respect. It got 7 nominees on the ballot, including the dread Vox Day (more on him later, but for now all you need to know is that he is a generally despised man in certain segments of fandom, particularly those who vote on Hugos). The interesting thing about this campaign is that Correia’s goal was to provoke a negative response. It wasn’t about acknowledging writers that wouldn’t otherwise get attention, it was about making “literati heads explode” because he wrote a book where FDR was a nominal villain and got it on the Hugo ballot for best novel. The response was predictable: a massive backlash. Action, reaction. Most of the Puppy nominees last year finished low, and one finished below No Award. Correia claims he’s happy with the result, because his goal wasn’t to actually win a Hugo, just demonstrate that he’d upset people by getting the wrong works shortlisted. A decidedly pyrrhic victory, if you ask me. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy and totally against the spirit of the awards.

A year later, the torch passes to Brad Torgersen, who ran the third Sad Puppies campaign. Unlike the previous campaigns, Torgersen attempted to put a kinder, friendlier face on Sad Puppies. He spoke of diversity and bringing recognition to authors that are usually overlooked. Some of his arguments are more effective than others and I’m sure we could quibble over details, but it seems clear that he’s coming from a place of good faith. Unlike Correia before him, he really wanted to get recognition for the nominees, and wanted to give them a chance to win.

Now we come to Vox Day, an infamous personality in the field. I will not go into too many details here because I really don’t want to wade through all the unpleasant topics that arise in this discussion, but suffice it to say that he appears to be a very successful troll in the classical sense. It would be amusing if it didn’t seem so counterproductive. He’s got a knack for very carefully wording statements such that they are easily misquoted out of context and lead to easy conclusions that he’s a crazy, evil man. It’s a deliberate strategy. Where most people would clarify and caveat statements they know will be controversial, Vox leans into them. In the course of this, I think there are plenty of times in which his statements are perhaps not worded as carefully as he thinks, and thus some rather unpleasant ideas are left hanging like a bad curveball. Action, reaction. People hate the guy. Personally, I know enough about Vox to know that I don’t want or need to know more. Please don’t construe this explanation as an endorsement of anything he’s said (incidentally, this clarification that I just made is precisely the sort of thing that Vox wouldn’t do).

Vox Day’s appearance on Sad Puppies 2 seemed to be the flashpoint of that campaign and drove a lot of negative response. Perhaps recognizing this, Torgersen deliberately left Vox off the Sad Puppies 3 ballot (also of note, Torgersen left himself off the ballot as well). That doesn’t mean that Vox can’t play along though. He has a huge following, and posted his own splinter list, called Rabid Puppies, on his blog. The two lists overlap considerably, though Vox had more nominees and a much less friendly tone. For instance, Torgersen called for people to read the works and nominate what they felt was worthy. Vox urged people to “nominate them precisely as they are”. And so on.

Sad Puppies 3 and Rabid Puppies have been remarkably successful, taking the grand majority of nominees (especially in the main fiction awards) and in several categories, all the nominees are Puppy works of some kind. The response has been remarkably negative. Action, reaction.

One of those reactions is that several high profile members of fandom have vowed to vote No Award in place of any and all Puppy nominees. This means voting No Award instead of works they liked (this seems especially likely in the Best Dramatic Presentation awards), and it also means not even bothering to read the works in question. Action, reaction.

The more successful the No Award voters are, the worse off we’ll be. Vox Day has explicitly mentioned that if No Awards wins in 2015, he’ll make sure that No Award wins in 2016. This is a despicable tactic meant to bully people, but then, so is voting No Award without reading the work. Even taking Vox out of the equation, I can’t imagine a scenario where No Award winning will produce a good result next year. Somehow, this is not against the rules either, which seems odd (there’s a reasonable explanation, but what’s being deployed this year is not that). If this happens, we can look forward to years of finger pointing and pointless vitriol debating who killed the Hugos. I, for one, am not looking forward to this.

Every system in play here is caught in a negative feedback loop that is subverting the desired result. The Sad Puppies want recognition for the overlooked, but went about it in a way that alienated too many people to be successful. The Noah Ward voters are trying to register their disgust, but in doing so, seem unlikely to achieve their aims. In the meantime, the ostensibly democratic Hugo process is strained to the point of breaking.

Regardless of your stance on the matter, it would behoove us all to consider how easily our ideal scenarios can boomerang back on us, pushing us into a downward spiral that results in the opposite of what we were seeking in the first place. No one is operating in isolation. Action, reaction. While complex systems can sometimes oppose their own proper function, it doesn’t need to be that way. But if we continue on the current path, it will be that way, and I don’t think any of us want that.

My approach tends to be one of restraint and forbearance. This will not (and should not) be the same for everyone. If you’re a die-hard puppy, more power to you, and vote your conscience. I don’t like the slate approach, so please don’t coordinate so tightly in the nomination process next year. It won’t get you what you desire, it will just piss people off further. We’re in an unexpected place right now and can’t fault you for being more successful than anyone ever thought, but the important thing is what you do next year. If you’re a non-puppy or even if you’re a Noah Ward voter, more power to you too. I get the distaste for slates and certainly for Vox and don’t blame you for wanting to oppose it all in a vigorous fashion, even if that’s not my approach.

All that being said, it’s worth considering what your goals are, and evaluating whether your actions will actually get you there. There’s been a lot of name calling, accusations of bad faith, conspiracy theories, general vitriol, and even abuse being spewed forth of late. On all fronts. I get it, sometimes that feels good, but at some point, we need to take a closer look at what we’re doing. People are talking past each other, and the rest of us are caught in the middle. Some might call this tone policing, but I think it’s how things get done.

I will leave you with this anecdote about Charles Darwin’s rhetorical strategy (emphasis mine):

Darwin, says Slatkin, was like a salesman who finds lots of little ways to get you to say yes before you’re asked to utter the big yes. In this case, Darwin invited people to affirm things they already knew, about a topic much more familiar in their era than in ours: domestic species. Did people observe variation in domestic species? Yes. And as Darwin piles on the examples, the reader says, yes, yes, OK, I get it, of course I see that some pigeons have longer tail feathers. Did people observe inheritance? Yes. And again, as he piles on the examples, the reader says yes, yes, OK, I get it, everyone knows that that the offspring of longer-tail-feather pigeons have longer tail feathers.

By the time Darwin gets around to asking you to say the big yes, it’s a done deal. You’ve already affirmed every one of the key pillars of the argument. And you’ve done so in terms of principles that you already believe, and fully understand from your own experience.

It only took a couple of years for Darwin to formulate the idea of evolution by natural selection. It took thirty years to frame that idea in a way that would convince other scientists and the general public. Both the idea, and the rhetorical strategy that successfully communicated it, were great innovations.

I’ve blogged about this before, and as I mentioned then, I think perhaps the author simplifies the inception and development of the idea of evolution, but the point holds. I’m sure Darwin and his supporters were infuriated by the initial response to their ideas, and I’m sure plenty of hateful rhetoric was employed at the time. But Darwin didn’t allow it to spiral, he knew evolution was important enough that it would have to be accepted if he communicated it in such a way that people could accept it. I, for one, am glad he did. I don’t know that the solution to the challenges facing the Hugo are, but I know it’s not vitriol. And I hope it doesn’t take 30 years!

The ascension of geek culture in the United States has meant that long marginalized genres like Science Fiction have become more acceptable, or at least tolerated. Ironically, this acknowledgement from the literary mainstream seems to be part of the current culture war, what with Sad Puppies whining about message fiction and anti-puppies trying to counter the surprisingly successful efforts to return SF to the gutter (as it were). While many have cast this as a political issue, and there certainly is a political component, I’ve always thought that Eric S. Raymond’s analysis of the situation, based more on the qualities of literary fiction, was more cogent:

Literary status envy is the condition of people who think that all genre fiction would be improved by adopting the devices and priorities of late 19th- and then 20th-century literary fiction. Such people prize the “novel of character” and stylistic sophistication above all else. They have almost no interest in ideas outside of esthetic theory and a very narrow range of socio-political criticism. They think competent characters and happy endings are jejune, unsophisticated, artistically uninteresting. They love them some angst.

People like this are toxic to SF, because the lit-fic agenda clashes badly with the deep norms of SF. Many honestly think they can fix science fiction by raising its standards of characterization and prose quality, but wind up doing tremendous iatrogenic damage because they don’t realize that fixating on those things (rather than the goals of affirming rational knowability and inducing a sense of conceptual breakthrough) produces not better SF but a bad imitation of literary fiction that is much worse SF.

Into this weary situation comes The Three-Body Problem, by China’s most popular science-fiction writer Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu, no relation). In China, the situation is somewhat different. After decades in which Chinese SF was subject to the whims of Communist Party rule, first as a way to “popularizing science for socialist purposes”, then as a pariah that was “promoting decadent capitalist elements”, it appears that SF is on the rise again. Liu has capitalized on the rising sentiment, and his most popular books are now getting translated and generating buzz amongst SF fandom.

Liu’s work is often described in terms of Golden Age SF, and in particular, the work of Arthur C. Clarke. At first, I was not sure if this book would be living up to that promise. There was a great deal of time and attention placed on cultural forces acting on science towards the beginning of the book (in particular, Liu spends a fair amount of time with the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 60s and 70s). Then there are some interesting, but seemingly not SF occurrences, such as a scientist who notices a number in his photographs. It appears to be a countdown, but he cannot account for how the number is appearing or what it is counting down to. There are a host of other, seemingly impossible events. There is a video game that is oddly hallucinatory and difficult to get through. And so on…

It turns out that this is all window dressing. The historical bits set the scene, the seemingly impossible occurrences generate a crisis amongst Earth scientists, and the video game holds the key to explaining what is going on. This episodic and oddly disjointed setup starts to click at some point, and the pieces start to fall together. Sometimes, it’s a little clunky or overwrought, but it comes together well in the end.

At its heart, it’s a first contact story, and if you’re familiar with those, you know that fiction rarely shies away from the inherent possibilities for conflict there. It was again a bit worrying at the start, because one of the main factions on earth are people who want the aliens to come to our planet because they don’t think the human race is worthy of existence (or something along those pessimistic lines), but it seems clear that this is not where the series is going, it’s just part of a lengthy setup. The aliens themselves are rather interesting, existing in a Tri-Solar system (one of a few references to the titular “three bodies”), a wildly unpredictable state of affairs that has guided their evolution and frequently destroys their civilizations (when, for example, two or three of the suns are in certain configuration, the planet becomes, shall we say, unsuitable to life.)

This is all a bit unconventional from a Western point of view, and why wouldn’t it be? It’s also one of the things that makes this an interesting book to grapple with. From a plot or character standpoint, it feels a bit lacking, but there are many rich thematic elements that one could explore here. These basically come down to competition and disruption. The conflict between civilizations at this book’s core could easily be applied to more mundane struggles, from industrial competition, to the rise of China in relation to the West. Disruption is a key element of business, creating and/or destroying markets, often through the use of technology. It is how people react to such disruptions that are the point, and the rival factions on earth reacting to the coming Aliens is a good example.

There are some fantastical elements that threaten to break it away from SF, especially earlier in the book. As mentioned above, these do come together well enough in the end, though Liu’s cleverness is in the way he sets it up. The early, nearly complete lack of realism sets a point of reference such that, when Liu does get around to explaining why these things are happening, it feels acceptable even though it’s mostly hokum. Chaos Horizon explains it well:

While some of the scientific sections are sound, others are deliberately exaggerated. Near the end, there’s a bravura sequence where an alien civilization “unravels” a proton from 11 dimensions to 1, 2, and 3 dimensions, and then inscribes some sort of computer on that seemingly miniscule space. It’s one of the most fascinating pieces of bullshit I’ve read in years, but it is bullshit nonetheless.

Fascinating bullshit, indeed. I was more than willing to go with it.

This being the first book in a trilogy, little is resolved in the end, though it does finish on a positive note and it leaves you wanting more. The next volume is scheduled to be published next year, and I’m greatly looking forward to it, which says a lot.

I read this earlier in the year as part of my Hugo Award coverage. It came out late last year and was steadily building steam, and once it was nominated for a Nebula award, I thought I should check it out. I’m glad I did, and it made my Hugo ballot, but once the official nominees were released (and this book wasn’t on their), I kinda scuttled doing a full review. However, since this year’s Hugo awards are so weirdly contentious, one of the Best Novel nominees dropped out of the race. I’m not sure if this is unprecedented or not, but it’s highly unlikely nonetheless (authors often refuse their nomination, but are given a chance to do so before the finalists are announced – this situation where an author sees the lay of the year’s Hugo land and simply opts out was surprising) and many were expecting this to mean that the Best Novel category would only include 4 nominees. After all, adding the next most popular nominee would tell everyone who got the least nominating votes (info that is only published after the awards are handed out) and honestly, given the current situation, this precedent seems ripe for abuse. Nevertheless, the Hugo administrators opted to fill the open slot with The Three-Body Problem (a non-Puppy nominee, though from what I’ve seen, the Puppies seem to really enjoy this book). From left off the ballot to potential winner, quite a turn of events. Of the two nominees I’ve read, this is clearly ahead and could possibly take my number 1 vote. It is a bit of an odd duck, but I quite enjoyed it.

It’s been about a week since the Hugo finalists were announced… and there’s been way too much commentary to comb through. I’m going to post a few links here, but know that there are others who are doing a far better job summarizing the commentary, and to be quite honest, I’m already burnt out on the politics of the thing. This will most likely be my last post on the subject, though I suspect I’ll get pulled back in depending on how recklessly No Award is deployed in the final tally. For the record, I think Sad Puppies 3 was far more successful than anyone thought (which includes them) and as such, I’m going to be somewhat leery of slates in the future (my preference would be for Sad Puppies 4 to simply encourage participation and maybe include an open post about eligible books as opposed to a straight slate). I have a hard time believing most of the conspiracies being thrown around, and am emphatically against the abuse that’s been generated (which goes both ways). I don’t like guilt by association and generally assume good faith in participants. Many nominees are being thrown under a bus for petty reasons, and that seems silly to me. As always, I plan to read and vote accordingly. Anywho, here are some other folks commenting on the slate.

• File 770 has been all over this thing, with daily updates and link roundups that are well worth checking out. If you’re the type who wants to continue devouring commentary, this is the place to go.
• Chaos Horizon has been doing some excellent statistical analyses based on available data. It seems likely that there are at least some voters who nominated the straight puppy slate, though there’s not enough information to say for sure. Honestly, I don’t know that there ever will, though when the full numbers are released in August, we’ll be able to speculate on a maximum impact (but even that won’t prove anything). My anecdotal experience in looking at puppy nominators is that they are people who only voted for things they read and liked (and thus did not nominate the full ballot).
• A Note About the Hugo Nominations This Year – Like last year, John Scalzi’s reaction has been eminently reasonable:
  

  2. I’m very pleased for the several friends and/or writers who are on the ballot this year. This includes everyone in the Best Novel category, all of whom I consider friends, and any of whom I would be happy to see take home a rocket this year. And as always, I congratulate all the nominees for the Hugo and the Campbell. It’s fun to be nominated, and nice to get recognition. I’ll be voting.

  3. This year I’ll do what I always do when voting for the Hugos, which is to rank the nominees every category according to how I think they (and/or their particular works in question) deserve to ranked. Preferential balloting is a useful thing. I will be reading quite a lot.

  …In sum: I think it’s possible for voters to thread the needle and give creators fair consideration while also expressing displeasure (if indeed one is displeased) at the idea of slates, or people trolling the award. This might take a little work, but then voting on the Hugos should be a little bit of work, don’t you think. This is a good year to do that.

  Well said.

• Thoughts on the 2015 Hugo Award Nominees – Joe Sherry has reasonable things to say, and unlike 99.9% of other commentary, he also posted some thoughts on the actual ballot. I’m more or less in line with this approach:
  

  At this point I have read far too many articles written on both sides of the debate, and while I’m not willing to say “I hate everyone equally”, I can say that I’m fairly well annoyed by most people. I am not on the side of the Sad Puppies because generally, the sort of book and the sort of story I enjoy reading is already what is frequently represented by the Hugos (though there are certain authors I am very, very confused by how frequently they are nominated for stuff – but I’ve always chalked it up to different and divergent tastes and nothing more). But, I do agree with one of their stated aims: which is that more people should be involved in the Hugo awards. Heck, the people who nominated and vote are only a small fraction of the people who actually attend Worldcon. Get them involved, too, somehow. Everything might look different if that happened.

  So, what am I going to do?

  I’m going to read everything on the ballot and hope that the Hugo voter packet is inclusive of everything on it (minus the dramatic presentations), and then I’m going to vote accordingly. I look forward to the Hugo Awards every year and enjoy thinking about them, talking about them, occasionally writing way too many words about them. Before I knew anything about the awards, I believed that they were the premier award in science fiction and fantasy. The best of the best. The Oscar of the genre. Later I learned that the Hugos were nothing more than an award given out by a particular community, and only nominated and voted on by a very small subset of that same community. The Hugos are reflective of a particular group of people, just as the Nebulas are, and the World Fantasy Awards are (the three I awards I care most about) – but the Hugos is the one I can participate in, which makes it special even knowing what I do about it. So, I respect the process of the award and will treat all the nominees fairly and at face value – and I think it is disappointing that I felt the need to write that sentence.

  Again, reasonable stuff.

• The Disavowal – A Sad Puppy nominee disavows stuff.
• Mary Anne Mohanraj also has reasonable things to say. She leads with a Bujold reference and takes Miles’ wisdom to heart, assuming good faith and providing some reasonable suggestions for the future.
• If you’re bitching about the Hugo Awards, you’re part of the problem. A more cynical approach here, but worth noting.
• Please stop with the death threats and the hate mail. Very nice to see Mary Robinette Kowal’s reasonable comments:
  

  Folks. Do not send death threats to Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen or anyone else on the Sad Puppies slate. That is a shitty thing to do. Stop it.

  I, too, am angry about how things went down with the Hugos, but am also realistic about the fact that much of the work — not all of it — but a lot of it is on there because people are legitimately excited about it. Yes, there are some things from Rabid Puppies that seem to be there purely for shock value. But others? Sheila Gilbert does damn good work. Jim Butcher is a serious writer.

  Hey, look, another person has actually looked at the ballot. And she also took the rather noble step of sponsoring 10 supporting memberships for folks who want to vote but can’t afford it… an effort that has caught on with other folks to the point where there are now 75 sponsored memberships. Well done.

• George R.R. Martin has been pretty active this week, and this post on Hatespeech is just one of them:
  

  And now there’s Puppygate, and I have been posting about that, and in the course of which I have had some exchanges with Larry Correia, the founder of Sad Puppies, and Brad Torgensen, who ran the SP3 slate. And both of them tell similar tales: of anonymous phone calls, libel and slander, vicious emails, death threats… death threats! All of these, presumably, coming from “my side” of fandom, those who oppose the Puppies. Do I believe them? I don’t want to believe them. I would rather cling to the belief that my side is better than that. That’s hard to do these days, As strongly as I disagree with Torgensen and Correia about the Hugo Awards, and probably a hundred other issues, I have no reason to think them liars. I think they are telling the truth, just as Quinn and Sarkeesian and Wu were. On the internet, it seems, abuse trumps debate every time.

  Death threats. Really? Really???

• …to my people, don’t blame Tor – Larry Correia also jumps on the “stop being jerks” bandwagon:
  

  Don’t threaten to boycott anybody because of their business associations, because that’s exactly the kind of boorish behavior that’s been done to us.

  Don’t post links to a torrent site and suggest that people pirate stuff instead of giving a publishing house money. Do you have any idea how offensive it is to do that on a professional author’s feed?

  Tor seems to be a major boogeyman for some people, for some reason.

• Vox plays chicken with Worldcon – Brad Torgersen (organizer of the Sad Puppy 3 campaign) has some choice words for No Award voters (i.e. folks who vow to vote No Award above everything on the Puppy slates), including Vox Day’s thread to No Award 2016:
  

  Frankly, I think everybody should just do what Mary Robinette Kowal and Dan Wells and Scalzi and Correia and Jason Sanford and myself have been recommending you do, and read your voter packet and vote like the stories and books are just stories and books.

  If Vox borks the Hugos in 2016, he is the biggest asshole SF/F has ever seen in its history.

  Vox, please don’t be an asshole.

  If the people who hate Vox bork the Hugos in 2015, they are the biggest assholes SF/F has ever seen in its history.

  Vox-haters, please don’t be assholes.

  This is getting ridiculous. For the record, I think voting No Award above (or in place of) something just because it appears on a puppy slate is a bad idea. It is actually allowed technically if you read the rules closely, but it’s a pretty crappy thing to do. I don’t think slates are a great thing either, but the No Award approach is worse. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Or something like that.

Alright, so there’s some sampling of stuff. Like I said, I can’t really keep up and at this point, I’m ready to just move on and start reading the actual work (because why spend that time reading vitriol and disingenuous arguments?) Care to join me? Oh, and by the way, comments are working again! Huzzah!

The nominees for the 2015 Hugo Awards were announced yesterday, and the entire world is losing their shit because the Sad Puppy campaign has pretty much run away with the slate. Assorted thoughts below:

• My ballot faired quite poorly indeed! Not counting the Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category (because it’s a pretty mainstream category, though I’ll have some additional thoughts on this below), only one nominee made it to the official ballot, and that was a (mostly accidental) overlap with the Sad Puppy campaign. In fairness, Ken Burnside’s The Hot Equations (in Best Related Work) is a worthy nominee with an endearing nod to SF right in its title. I find my lack of success here mildly amusing in that this is what the majority of Sad Puppy nominators must have felt in years past, but what most of the Sad Puppy opposition is feeling right now (even if I don’t particularly subscribe to either side in the battle).
• When I first saw the Sad Puppy slate (and Rabid Puppy slate), I thought the dramatic increase in suggested works would result in a decrease in concentration amongst the choices, thus spreading out the voting and yielding relatively few successes. I was incredibly wrong in this prediction. It appears that the Puppy campaigns were remarkably effective this year, with 61 nominees appearing on at least one of the lists (only 24 of the nominees did not appear on either list, and many of those were in categories that the Puppies did not bother to include in their ballots). I predict widespread panic, bleating, and protest voting (“No Award” will be deployed with reckless abandon). Then again, I’ve been pretty wrong about everything else, so who knows?
• Personally, while I don’t really identify as a Sad Puppy, I never bore them ill will and their notion of emphasizing fun storytelling over boring literary fiction conventions was attractive to me (my nominations for the fiction categories had no overlap with the Puppy ballots, but I suspect many Puppies would enjoy them). That being said, I can’t help but feel like the pendulum has swung too far in their direction. If I were running Sad Puppies next year, I would focus on encouraging participation rather than posting a list of approved works. I don’t expect this to happen, but as I’ve amply demonstrated, I’m the worst and am often wrong.
• The whole kerfluffle comes down to assumptions of bad faith. The Puppies assume that people nominate things according to political merit rather than quality and rebel against that notion, the anti-puppies assume that the puppies are just blindly nominating the suggested slates (without having read the stories, etc…), again for political reasons. This is why people decry the inclusion of politics in previously non-political arenas. My assumption is of good faith, and as with last year, I’m just going to read the nominated works and vote accordingly. I’m already pretty sick of all the digital ink being spilled about the politics of all this stuff, and don’t expect to have much more to say about it.
• Let’s take a closer look at the Novel category:
  • Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie – Sequel to last year’s unstoppable winner, Ancillary Justice, this is one of the few non-puppy nominees to become a finalist and the only nominee that I’ve already read. Alas, I was not as big a fan of this one as the first book in the series.
  • The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson – A puppy nominee, this looks to be a standalone (or start of a trilogy) set in the context of a larger setting. My only experience with Anderson was his not-so-great Star Wars Jedi Academy trilogy. Timothy Zahn basically reignited Star Wars fever in the early 90s with his Thrawn Trilogy (the first and to my knowledge, best of the modern expanded universe stories) and Anderson quickly doused it with his trilogy (at least, for me). But it’s been, like, 20 years, and this book seems like it could work well enough, so there is that. I actually have a modest amount of hope for this one.
  • The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison – The other non-puppy nominee, a well regarded fantasy novel that seems like it could be a lot of fun. Looking forward to this one.
  • Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos – Appears to be a military SF story, the second in a series. The whole series this is always kinda annoying, but these do seem up my alley and they appear to be short page turners. Definitely looking forward to this one.
  • Skin Game by Jim Butcher – Of the Sad Puppy nominees, I was most expecting this one to win. Butcher’s Desden Files series is immensely popular. I suspect the reason that none of the previous books were nominated is that urban fantasy is just not something that normally does well with Hugo voters. I’m decidedly mixed on the Dresden Files books. I’ve read the first three, enjoyed two of them and hated one (the second one, with the werewolves). That being said, it’s not really one of my favorite series. This being the 15th book in the long-running series, I also find myself wondering how standalone it would be (but I’m not going to read the intervening 11 books just to come up to speed).

  This is actually a pretty good mix of sub-genres here. Two space operas (one trending more literary than the other), one mil-SF, one straight-up fantasy, and one urban fantasy. Obviously, I still have to read 4 of the nominees, but I actually think this slate is more attractive to me than last year’s…

• The Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form list is decent enough, I guess, but I always find it odd that the Hugo for best movie always seems to be mostly mainstream blockbusters and not the little indie SF movies (which are often much better at capturing the sensawunda of written SF). For instance, I was really hoping that Coherence and The One I Love would get some love and heck, even the dreaded Vox Day included Coherence in his Rabid Puppies list, but alas, we get 5 blockbusters. But they are actually very good blockbusters, so there is that. Update: There is speculation that Coherence was left off because IMDB marks it as a 2013 release and thus would not be eligible for a 2014 award. Dooks.

Comments are still borked right now, so if you have any comments, feel free to email me at mciocco at gmail or hit me up on twitter @mciocco (or @kaedrinbeer if you’re a lush). Apologies, I am the worst. Will have to make a more concerted effort to fix the problems with comments in the near future.

So there you have it. I don’t think I’ll be spending much time on the whole political war going on with this stuff, but I suspect it will be unavoidable in some places. Expect some link roundups in the near future, followed by reviews. I will still try my best to let the works speak for themselves though. It may be a few weeks before I finish off my current reading, so I probably won’t get to any reviews until May-ish.

The Hugo Award Nomination Period ended last night, and miracle of miracles, I managed to get my ballot in on time. I suppose the value of posting this list after the deadline is questionable, but we’re that kind of timely here at Kaedrin (meaning, not timely at all). But I suppose if you’re looking to see what I enjoyed from last year’s spate of Science Fiction, this is a pretty good place to start. For the most part, this is just an expanded version of the list I posted in January, and that commentary is generally just as relevant here (most of the comments here will be about the additions and possibly some general expectations). Additions are noted with an asterisk (*)

Best Novel:

• A Darkling Sea by James Cambias
• The Martian by Andy Weir
• A Sword Into Darkness by Thomas A. Mays
• Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer*
• The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin*

My initial three picks were all longshots. A Darkling Sea has a very outside chance (but I’m guessing it unlikely, and its buzz factor seems to be waning), The Martian suffers from an eligibility question (more on why I’m still including it here, though at this point, I think everyone’s fears mean that even if is eligible, it won’t get nominated because everyone is leaving it off their list), and A Sword Into Darkness is self-published mil-SF that the literati probably would hate. The two additions are considerably more likely to be nominated. Annihilation is a near certain shoe-in for a nomination (it’s already got a Nebula nom) and pretty good odds on taking the prize. I just finished The Three-Body Problem myself and will probably write a full post about it at some point, but it’s been steadily picking up steam since it’s release in November. Unfortunately, a lot of mainstream buzz (like this New Yorker article) appear to be hitting a little too late to really influence the nomination process. On the other hand, it did garner a Nebula nomination and it ticks a bunch of typical Hugo checkboxes, so it’s got a good chance. While I wasn’t a huge fan, I would also predict Leckie’s Ancillary Sword will grab a nomination because of the runaway success of Ancillary Justice (last year’s winner) and generally positive reviews. Scalzi’s Lock In has a decent chance, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets left out either. I’m betting Correia will be one of the few beneficiaries of the Sad Puppy campaign, and possibly Butcher’s Skin Game while we’re at it. There’s usually some sort of fantasy novel in contention as well, but I’m not too familiar with those…

Best Novelette

• Atmosphæra Incognita by Neal Stephenson (from Hieroglyph)
• A Hotel in Antarctica by Geoffrey Landis (from Hieroglyph)
• The Bonedrake’s Penance by Yoon Ha Lee*

Still not sure if the first two are actually Novelettes, but hey, I’m putting them there. Wanna fight about it? The addition is The Bonedrake’s Penance, which I guess has some mild buzz, and Yoon Ha Lee seems like a rising star type (I’m certainly a new fan). No idea what else would tickle fandom for these short fiction categories.

Best Short Story:

• Periapsis by James L. Cambias (from Hieroglyph)
• Covenant by Elizabeth Bear (from Hieroglyph)
• The Day It All Ended by Charlie Jane Anders (from Hieroglyph)
• Passage of Earth by Michael Swanwick (from Clarkesworld)*
• The Knight of Chains, the Deuce of Stars by Yoon Ha Lee (from Space Opera)*

Note that Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer by Megan Grey is not eligible for this year’s awards (something about the magazine being a January 2015 edition that just happened to be available in December). It will, however, be eligible next year (at which point, I genuinely expect it to be nominated). Covenant seems to have buzz and Hieroglyph was a popular anthology, so it has that going for it. Passage of Earth also feels like it has some buzz. However, the short story category is infamously fickle, with votes spread out amongst the widest range of stories (many stories which could potentially be nominated aren’t because they fall short of getting 5% of the overall vote). It’s always something of a crapshoot. All I know is that I liked just about all of the short stories I read this year much better than any of the nominees from last year.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form:

• Coherence
• The One I Love
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Edge of Tomorrow
• The Lego Movie*

Coherence and The One I Love are far and above my favorites of the year and I’m pretty sure they won’t even come close to being nominated (both recommended though!). I swapped out The Lego Movie for Interstellar (though I think both of those will end up making the cut) I also wouldn’t be surprised if movies I didn’t care for do well, notably Snowpiercer.

Best Related Work:

• The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF by Ken Burnside (from Riding the Red Horse)*
• Jodorowsky’s Dune*

This is a weird, catch-all category, but I actually think these two things have a good chance of winning (gasp, I aligned with the Sad Puppies on one of these). One thing I feel bad about is not nominating A Report on Damage Done by One Individual Under Several Names by Laura Mixon. It’s placement in terms of categories is unclear though. George R.R. Martin apparently recommended her for Best Fan Writer, which didn’t seem quite right, and I just plain forgot to add it to my ballot last night. Which is a shame, because that is some tour-de-force shit that Mixon put together there.

Best Professional Artist:

• Stephan Martiniere for covers like The Immortality Game and Shield and Crocus*

Yeah, I guess I fell for Ted Cross’s push for Stephan (who provided the art for Cross’s book), but this artist is genuinely talented and I kinda love his covers.

Best Fan Writer:

• Abigail Nussbaum*

I don’t have a lot here, but Nussbaum is a regular read and I think she should have won last year, so here we are again.

And that just about covers it. Official nominations will be announced, as usual, during the inexplicable Easter day timeframe, so look for some comments on the subject then.

I was pretty disappointed by last year’s Hugo slate of short stories, so I wanted to make sure I read enough stories this year to nominate worthwhile stuff. Of course, the short fiction categories are infamously fickle and don’t enjoy quite as much in the way of convergence as the novels do (meaning that a very wide array of stories are nominated with little chance of any individual story standing out from the crowd – this is why there often isn’t a full ballot nominated, as many of the contenders never reach the 5% threshold needed to make the Hugo ballot). The good news here, though, is that I enjoyed almost all of the stories in this post a lot more than almost any of the stories nominated in short fiction categories last year. Go figure. That being said, I will probably only nominate a couple of these because there’s only so many slots…

• Whaliens (aka How to Win a Hugo Award) by Lavie Tidhar (Short Story, ~4900 words) – This is a goofy little story about whale-like aliens (i.e. Whaliens) that visit Earth and demand to convert to Judaism. As the alternate title might indicate, it also involves a dismissive sub-plot about science fiction writers that feels rather petty and dismissive. It’s a fun, short read and worth checking out, but it’s not going to be on my ballot.
• Toad Words by Ursula Vernon (Short Story, ~800 words) – This year’s “If You Were a Dinosaur My Love”, it is marginally more fantastical, but still pretty emphatically not my thing.
• Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer by Megan Grey (Short Story, ~4000 words) – Every once in a while, you hear about how someone infamous and/or super evil spends their spare time doing mundane things like watching Seinfeld or something, and that kinda tickles me. So this story about a fire demon ironically condemned to live out his retirement in exile in Minnesota (i.e. a very cold, snowy place) really clicked with me. Molakesh enjoys hot chocolate and chatting with his teenaged neighbor. There’s a moment when I was worried that this story would go off the rails, but it sticks the ending, and I found this the most enjoyable of the stories in this post. Will almost certainly make my ballot.
• Passage of Earth by Michael Swanwick (Short Story, ~7400 words) – Interesting story about an autopsy performed on an alien that takes a hard turn about halfway through. It descends a bit into literary angst for a while, but it’s not undone by it and reasons its way to a natural conclusion. Strong contender for my ballot.
• The Innocence of a Place by Margaret Ronald (Short Story, ~4100 words) – Haunting tale of a historian’s attempt to understand the disappearance of students from the Braxton Academy for Young Girls. There’s a beautifully ominous tone to the story and it is very effective… as horror. As the obvious explanations are thrown out, what is left is speculation on the fantastical, so I don’t know that this is quite as non-SF as, say, last year’s Wakulla Springs, but it’s borderline. I don’t think I’d nominate it, but I would not get worked up about it if it got nominated…
• Brute by Rich Larson (Short story, ~4800 words) – Entirely predictable tale of two scavengers who run across a piece of technology that bonds to one of them and gives him super powers or something like that. It’s the sort of thing you’ve seen a million times, but it is a reasonably well executed version of the story. That being said, it’s not exactly award-worthy material.
• Death and the Girl from Pi Delta Zeta, by Helen Marshall – Seems like it would hit on that mundane life of infamous personages thing that I like so much, but this one is distinctly less effective to my mind. Well executed for what it is, but not really my thing.
• Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology by Theodora Goss (Short Story, ~6800 words) – A bunch of anthropology students invent a country from scratch and are then surprised to learn that the country they made up actually exists. They go to visit and find that many of the small details they have invented for the culture have unintended consequences. This becomes particularly important when one of the anthropologists marries the princess. A dense, Borges-like story (Borges is explicitly referenced in the story, so this is an obvious referent) that I found appealing and interesting. A potential nominee…
• The Bonedrake’s Penance by Yoon Ha Lee (Novelette, ~9800 words) – Notable for its elaborate but not overwhelming worldbuilding, this follows the story of a human girl raced by an alien war machine that had given up war. Perhaps more concerned with that central relationship than the detailed setting, it works better than I’d expect. Would love to read more from Yoon Ha Lee… Would be a contender for my ballot if I hadn’t actually done so:
• The Knight of Chains, the Deuce of Stars by Yoon Ha Lee (Short Story, ~5700 words) – So I did seek out more Yoon Ha Lee, and this one is even better than the last one. Interestingly, there are a lot of similarities. Both have an archive of sorts (games, in this one), a guardian (a warden, in this one), and both feature disgraced warriors of some kind. This one is about the warden of a collection of games and a warrior who intends to bargain for a game that will help her keep a promise. They play a game with high stakes and the byzantine worldbuilding implied by the games is quite impressive.

I may sneak in a few more stories before the deadline, but I’m planning on posting my updated ballot on Sunday, so stay tuned.

As Hugo Awards nomination season hits full swing, the Sad Puppy slates have finally be unleashed. For the uninitiated, the Sad Puppies are a semi-organized response to the notion that recent Hugo slates have trended away from traditional SF, with it’s emphasis on sense of wonder and storytelling (the name emerges out of the notion that recent Hugo slates were so depressing that they were making cute puppies sad, or something along those lines). There is an ideological component to the movement as well, and it seems the Right/Libertarian are on the Puppies’ side, while Left/SJW are opposed. Or something. In reality, I don’t really buy that dichotomy, and that’s one of the reasons I can’t seem to get on board with the typical responses to the Sad Puppies (for it or against it). To me, it’s just another input into the process, which is pretty much how it’s supposed to work.

For the record, Brad Torgersen has posted the official Sad Puppy slate over at his blog. Vox Day has posted a variant, which he calls (perhaps unsurprisingly, given his usual tone) Rabid Puppies. There’s a pretty large overlap, though enough differences to be annoying. Assorted thoughts and ramblings are below:

• The first thing that jumps out at me with these slates is how huge they are (both are basically a full nominating ballot – somewhere on the order of 50-75 overall between the two lists). I think part of the reason Sad Puppies 2 enjoyed success last year was that the list was relatively small (12 choices in various categories), so the impact was concentrated on those works. Remember, the people who nominate for the hugo are actually people! They will not have read this entire slate and chances are, there are plenty of things on the slate that they did read, but would not nominate. Anecdotal evidence indicates this was the case last year, and even the hard numbers show that there was significant variance in the amount of nominating votes for each work. I expect people’s votes will be spread out across the entire slate, and since there are so many options, that may spread things too thin.
• Comparing the two lists is interesting, as is the tone in which they’re presented. Torgersen is very careful to indicate that his list “is a recommendation. Not an absolute.” He has repeatedly mentioned that it’s not about politics, but about story and fun. He also acknowledges the idea that you might not like works on the slate (though “we suspect you might”). Torgersen also, much to his credit, made sure that his own works would not appear on his slate. Day, on the other hand, is extremely combative about the whole situation and appears to be much more ideologically motivated (he explicitly mentions the “science fiction Right”). He encourages folks who trust his opinion on the subject to “nominate them precisely as they are”. He also nominated himself in multiple categories (though in the editing categories, not the fiction categories). On the other hand, he nominated Coherence on the Dramatic Presentation Long Form category, which is a personal favorite that I’d love to see get nominated (even though it probably wouldn’t). This is why I can never get on board with Sad Puppies, nor can I really get too worked up about it either. Just because a work appears there doesn’t mean it is or is not worthy of a nomination.
• In terms of The Martian, it looks like fears of its eligibility (or lack thereof) means that it was not included in either slate. I actually emailed the Sasquan administrators, but their (perfectly reasonable) response was: “the standard Hugo committee policy for many years has been to not make suggestions on nominations or rule on eligibility of nominated items until nominations close”. Apparently, when eligibility of a specific work was announced in the past, other nominees felt it represented an endorsement, so the policy is to maintain impartiality. This makes perfect sense. Interestingly, Vox Day actually quotes me on the matter, though as usual, his tone is way more combative and makes my post seem equally so, even though I’m not. My example of a self-published work that was later published and then nominated was John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. Day hates Scalzi, and uses my example as evidence that the Hugos are corrupt or something. This was not my intention at all, and it’s weird to see my words deployed in such a fashion. Indeed, I’ve always thought that the Sad Puppy attitude towards Scalzi has been rather weird. Yes, Scalzi is outspoken on his blog about certain leftist issues, but for the most part, his fiction is fantastic and entertaining stuff. You could make an argument that something like Redshirts was only nominated because he’s popular with a certain segment of fandom, but that’s the kind of thing that happens with populist awards. More to the point, Scalzi’s work tends to be that more old-school science fiction. Redshirts has it’s flaws, but it’s a very fun book, exactly the sort of thing I’d expect to see on the Sad Puppy slate (except that, obviously, it enjoys wide popularity across most of fandom). That never made sense to me. On the other hand, “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue” is, in fact, a pretty lame nomination.
• Eric S. Raymond appears on both slates as a nominee for the Campbell Award (for the most promising new writer in SF), which, as he himself notes, is a little strange:
  

  I will stipulate that I think my one published work of SF, the short story Sucker Punch, isn’t bad. If it were someone else’s and I was wearing my reviewer hat, I’d probably say something encouraging about it being a solid, craftsmanlike first effort that delivers what its opening promises and suggests the author might be able to deliver quality work in the future.

  But, Campbell Award material? A brilliant comet in the SF firmament I am not. I don’t really feel like I belong on that shortlist – and if I’m wrong and I actually do, I fear for the health of the field.

  What bothers me more is the suspicion that my name has been put forward for what amount to political reasons.

  I’ve read Sucker Punch and think it’s a perfectly cromulent short story, but if I were to nominate it for something, it’d be for the short story category (which, I suspect will not happen, since it will probably be a crowded category for me by the time nominations close). As a Campbell nominee, I would want some sense that he, you know, intends to write a lot more fiction. I have no doubt that he could write more fiction (even great fiction), I just don’t see him taking that on. He’s been pretty clear that his focus is on hacking and Open Source advocacy (at which, he is very good and very successful) and that he did this mostly on a lark. Which makes this nomination kinda confusing. (Update: he basically confirms this in the comments)

• Speaking of Eric Raymond, he has some keen insights into the whole culture war of sorts that’s happening in SF right now (of which Sad Puppies is a symptom) that pretty well match up with where I’m coming from. His key insight is that this is not a political issue, but rather a matter of “Literary Status Envy”:
  

  Literary status envy is the condition of people who think that all genre fiction would be improved by adopting the devices and priorities of late 19th- and then 20th-century literary fiction. Such people prize the “novel of character” and stylistic sophistication above all else. They have almost no interest in ideas outside of esthetic theory and a very narrow range of socio-political criticism. They think competent characters and happy endings are jejune, unsophisticated, artistically uninteresting. They love them some angst.

  People like this are toxic to SF, because the lit-fic agenda clashes badly with the deep norms of SF. Many honestly think they can fix science fiction by raising its standards of characterization and prose quality, but wind up doing tremendous iatrogenic damage because they don’t realize that fixating on those things (rather than the goals of affirming rational knowability and inducing a sense of conceptual breakthrough) produces not better SF but a bad imitation of literary fiction that is much worse SF.

  His post on the deep norms of SF is also worth checking out. I find myself mostly agreeing with this analysis (and honestly, he gives a much better primer for the factions involved and general situation than I do above). All those things that literary fiction hates are what I love about science fiction. And I tend to dislike the angst that permeates literary fiction (that this often manifests as wallowing in identity politics and misery is incidental). This focus on literary fiction is why stuff like Wakulla Springs gets nominated for a Hugo, despite not even being slightly SF or even Fantasy. It’s a very well written story, to be sure, but it’s so far outside the boundaries of any type of genre fiction (let along SF) that I can see why the Sad Puppy campaign is happening.

So there you have it. I do not particularly hate or love Sad Puppies. Call that feckless if you want. I just know what I like. Sometimes that happens to coincide with the Sad Puppies, sometimes not. Go figure.