http://www.theguardian.com/books/20...hortlist-rightwing-campaign-sad-rabid-puppies
They'll no longer be mentioned as a "prestigious" award.
RAMA
They'll no longer be mentioned as a "prestigious" award.
RAMA
The Hugos are done
- Thread starter RAMA
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This is the fault of the people in charge of running the awards. After last year and even the more recent Boaty McBoatface vote, more should have been done to fix the loopholes as the voting process just does not lend itself to the digital world.
Ironic for a science fiction award, isn't it?
Ironic for a science fiction award, isn't it?
This is hilarious. This is what happens when pop culture actually gives a crap about something for the first time. These sort of industry awards in general are shit no one cares about anyway. They aren't about the unwashed masses, they're more about what professionals in some field think of their friends. The alternative is awards based on popularity with random fans, and people running these things would sooner burn it all down than have Lego: The Movie win best picture or something like that, which would totally happen with an open ballot.
The people running the awards did literally everything they could to fix the loopholes. But the established procedure requires that any rules change be approved at the convention two years running, to prevent the people attending one particular Worldcon from pushing through something that the larger community doesn't want. In this case that policy had the unfortunate side effect of guaranteeing a second year of slates warping the nominations, but it also means that voters will recognize that this wasn't a one-off problem and be more likely to approve the changes currently on the table.
The Hugos are voted on and their rules set by convention members, not industry professionals (there's overlap between the two groups, but not much), so they already are based on popularity with random fans. It's not an open ballot since a voting membership costs $50, but it's hardly an elitist award either. The award voted on exclusively by professionals is the Nebula.
And the Sad and Rabid Puppies aren't some kind of pop culture uprising. They're a very small group of writers and hangers-on whose fee-fees are hurt that they aren't more popular with Hugo voters, so they're trying to burn the awards down to make some kind of ill-defined political point. Pop culture still doesn't give a crap about the Hugos, and probably never will.
Well there's your problem. If it's open to the unwashed masses, then this shouldn't be such a drama fountain. Make it a pure industry award if you want pure industry picks. Otherwise, just give MLP their award and move on.
I went & looked at the list of people who got nominated, and aside from a few troll nominations, it looks like this puppy group pretty much just voted for the usual suspects you would expect anyway so I get the feeling the drama surrounding this is a little overblown.
I didn't know that--thanks for the insight.
The Sad Puppy picks are more legitimate this year because they worked from an actual recommendations list to which ordinary people could contribute, as opposed to last year, when it was basically one guy putting the list together and nominating his friends and political allies. But the Rabid Puppies are a pure exercise in self-promotion and trolling. And 64 of the 81 items on their list got nominated. They picked at least half the nominees in all but 4 out of 18 categories. Some of what they nominated is at least a higher class of trolling; in addition to the likes of My Little Pony and "Space Raptor Butt Invasion" they listed stuff that regular voters might pick anyway, in the hope of manipulating those voters into not awarding those works because of the slate. Because that's the point here: ruining the Hugos for people who care about them. Is the drama overblown in the sense that no award anywhere really matters, except in the sense that "Hugo winner" on the cover improves a book's sales? Sure. But people who want the Hugos to be about honest opinions, however parochial, rather than endless trolling have an actual grievance within their niche.
You're welcome. The people who care about the Hugo rules are very hidebound and process-driven, and a lot of the way it works is bound up in elaborate procedure. They hate the idea of major changes, which is what it will take to stop slates from dominating. But last year they did pass a proposal that will reduce the impact of slates as much as possible without restricting good-faith nominations, and after this set of nominees I can't imagine it won't pass again this year. There will still be slate nominees on next year's ballot-- there's no practical way to shut them out completely-- but they won't take over several categories as they have the past couple years.
What's even more annoying is when groups like this can influence the outcome of actual presidential elections.
Well, things like this and the protests against the Oscars this last year are really opportunities to take a hard look at the nature of awards to begin with. There's not a lot of "there," there.
What this will ultimately do is vastly diminish the usefulness of the Hugos as a marketing tool - their main value for decades now - and they'll eventually wind up being replaced by something else instead. In a sentimental sense, it's a damn shame.
What this will ultimately do is vastly diminish the usefulness of the Hugos as a marketing tool - their main value for decades now - and they'll eventually wind up being replaced by something else instead. In a sentimental sense, it's a damn shame.
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Amaris
Guest
I want MLP to win the Hugo. *watches the world burn at the hooves of candy colored ponies*
The campaigns have doubled that number in the same way that lobbyist groups increase the number of active participants when voting for a particular cause. What happens is that the silent majority is then forced to actually stand up and have their voice heard. In politics that is a good thing, but in something as seemingly simple as a science fiction award it seems kind of silly that people would need to do that.
The Hugos always had a small base of people who were science fiction aficionados who selected books based on quality and that furthered the genre. Often the Hugos and the Nebulas selected the same winners or at least the same finalists. These groups have turned them into some kind of political statement that was never intended to be their purpose. Looking back through the history of the winners, there are probably as many winners from the right side of the socio political spectrum as from the left.
The Hugos always had a small base of people who were science fiction aficionados who selected books based on quality and that furthered the genre. Often the Hugos and the Nebulas selected the same winners or at least the same finalists. These groups have turned them into some kind of political statement that was never intended to be their purpose. Looking back through the history of the winners, there are probably as many winners from the right side of the socio political spectrum as from the left.
Well, that's not really true. First of all, for a long time the Hugo ballot has been open to thousands of folks for the purchase of a supporting membership in WorldCon. Secondly, there's always been a lot of log-rolling and campaigning in the process; often it's as much about the writer as it is about what they had published this year. Quality and popularity, I am often reminded when I express my enthusiasm for many popular films, are not necessarily the same thing.
The Hugos were the People's Choice awards of science fiction. The Puppies have won nothing in the sense that by reducing them to an explicitly political award and making the campaigning more naked they're eliminating the utility of the thing. No publisher is going to snap up Vox's pewling just because they can slap "Hugo Award Winning Author" on the cover.
Fandom will have to get over it and make themselves up a new award.
The Hugos were the People's Choice awards of science fiction. The Puppies have won nothing in the sense that by reducing them to an explicitly political award and making the campaigning more naked they're eliminating the utility of the thing. No publisher is going to snap up Vox's pewling just because they can slap "Hugo Award Winning Author" on the cover.
Fandom will have to get over it and make themselves up a new award.
I will agree with nearly all of that. I've really been just a bystander as I'm more invested in what is horribly termed "literary" fiction but I use the Hugo and the Nebula to help me select the two or three science fiction novels I read in a year. I'm kind of spouting off about something I've not really been an expert in because it has only been the last two or three years I've learned about the details of the process for the Hugos, mainly because people's comments on this message board encouraged me to read up on it.
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Amaris
Guest
Clearly, none of you have seen the brilliance of pony.
While I'm not familiar with their current nominated works, I find it difficult to categorically condemn a group that nominated works by Jim Butcher & Alastair Reynolds. I very much enjoyed their previous work on the Codex Alera and "Harvest of Time," respectively.
Are there any particular works that should have been nominated that haven't been for political reasons?
Are there any particular works that should have been nominated that haven't been for political reasons?
The problem is (mostly) not in who they nominate but how and why they nominate them. The organizers are trolls and fossils of a bygone era when men were men, gays and blacks were villains and sidekicks at most, and women shut up, got rescued and made non-graphic love to the white male heroes. They think the Hugos have gotten too inclusive, too PC, too high-brow and literary. Their strategy is to use the web to organize people who share their politics, and who are not Worldcon attendees or supporters otherwise and may not even be interested in sci-fi/fantasy, to vote for things they've never read in order to force voters to choose from only options they deem acceptable. By getting large groups to vote for the same limited slate they force out many or all of the more varied "organic" votes from the people who actually care about the awards and nominated works they've actually read and feel are deserving.