So a few years pass and Sad Puppies have managed to keep the atmosphere tense. The Puppies continue to rail against non-existent leftist organizations and continue to make the Hugos far more political then it had been. I remember Eugie, in a day she was feeling sick, saying she was sorry, not for herself being in pain, but for the Hugo nominees as there would always be a taint on their nominations.
Sad Puppies leadership had changed. Correia turned it over to Brad Torgersen. Torgersen is a different kind of bird than Correia. He doesn’t burst into bouts of swearing, avoids blatantly racists statements, and his insult tend to avoid simply name-calling (though he did suddenly find the need to call me fat in a conversation that was irrelevant to my weight and that I wasn’t supposed to see, but I’ll just take that as his writer’s need to be descriptive, and I have put on a few pounds over the years). He’s still following the “leftist cliques are out to get us” troupe and he still names the same people Day did as opponents. But he has a lighter touch.
His line is that all the meaning in writing, all these themes and messages, are bad, and that science fiction needs to be fun tales of adventure. It needs to be about manly men (he actually uses that term) performing daring exciting deeds and things ending up happy in the end. That the leftists (social justice warriors) have been putting in all these messages into fiction (which is bad) and then getting those stories given awards (again, through secret insider trading). I tried to explain this view to a friend and she just stared at me. It is hard to imagine any artist objecting to theme. Pretty much every other artist I’ve ever met: filmmakers, painters, sculptors, and other writers, wanted to say something with their art. It’s kind of the point. Otherwise, what you’re making is equivalent to a rollercoaster. It can be fun, for a moment, but that’s about it.
It also doesn’t hold up. You see, a favorite author of the Puppies is Robert A. Heinlein. However, RAH (as people insist on calling him on the internet) is the ultimate in message writers. I’d say the ultimate social justice warrior but then someone would argue with definitions so I’ll keep it to message writer. This was a man who loved his themes, far far more than adventure. Of his three most famous books, one is restatement of Plato’s Republic, one is an ode to free love, and one is a Bible for libertarianism. In all cases, he was happy to pause the plot to discuss philosophy and politics. Once you reach his Lazarus Long stories, pretty much all you have is philosophy. But it is, generally, philosophy that the Puppies can support. The other, funnier example, of great, non-message adventure fiction that Torgersen suggests is Star Trek. Yes, Star Trek, the most message-laden of all message-laden science fiction. Let’s look at it. A man with one black side and one white side. Hmmm. We’ve got the Organians, who show Kirk that the “good guy” soldiers in a war are no different from the “bad guys.” We’ve got a military, action episode when the Enterprise searches for an invisible Romulan ship, that actually is a look at racism from two different angles. Roddenberry repeatedly said what he was doing was all about the message. David Gerrold, who wrote for Star Trek, who worked on the show, who knew Roddenberry and what they were doing, saw Torgersen’s post and responded, saying that he was wrong. That what they were doing was social justice. That was the important thing. Humorously, Torgersen responded by saying that Gerrold was wrong. Umm. Just…wow.
Vox Day, while still a supporter, has his own Rabid Puppies slate, which as it turns out, is pretty much the same as the Sad Puppies slate, but with himself added to more slots. Torgersen, knowing that Day is always going to make them look bad, but also that he brings in his followers, acknowledged that Day can be a bit extreme, but that the Puppies would never reject him. In an odd bit of twisting, he made it a religious thing, connected to Mormons and “shunning.” He stated that he would never “shun” Day, although he has no trouble distancing himself from anyone left of him politically and insulting others such as ex-officers for the SFWA (and me—remember the “fat” thing; though he also said that I was an “exquisite piece of raw manliness.” Perhaps it would be best if I didn’t look too closely at that.) It is only Day that his upbringing insists he must not “shun.”
Torgersen’s assurance that Sad Puppies isn’t about them being racist or sexist or frightened of non-existent leftist cabals, or about politics, but about putting forth great, over-looked, adventure-type fiction for awards also falls apart when you look at the slate for 2015. It is hardly expansive, going to the same people over and over, but forget all that. Look only at Best Fanzine (yes, that’s a category for the Hugos; there are a few…odd categories). There are many Fanzines out there. Most cannot be seen as having any political position. Of the many possible, they chose three (a reasonable number). Of those, one is run by a very right wing guy, but it is a reasonable suggestion. But then there is The Revenge of Hump Day. It is a mildly racist publication attached to a convention and run by a man known for his right wing views. Now, I said mildly racist—and it is. No frothing Vox Day-type stuff. More off color jokes, particularly about President Obama. The problem isn’t that it is racist, but that it is primitive. It’s something I’d expect 12-year-olds to put together back when I was a kid and we didn’t have word processors. Now I know there’s no way that doesn’t sound insulting–I’m not talented enough to word it in a way that explains what it is without being insulting–but I don’t mean it to be insulting. Because in it’s place, as a jokey pamphlet for convention attendees, it’s fine. No reason it has to be more. For its purpose, it is fine and dandy—it just shouldn’t be in an award discussion. No one, ever, would choose it for an award based on content. The only reason you choose it, over so many others, is for politics. And so, the example that proves the rule. Sad Puppies is what it is and a more polite front man doesn’t change that.
Of course there’s been lots of unpleasant conversations and posts from those supporting and opposing the Pups, though nothing like the rape and death threats connected to gamergate. There’s a lot of name-calling, a majority of it either coming from or about Vox Day. The next biggest collection of insults I’ve seen has come from Correia, who is really an artist with profanity. “idiot libprog pussies” and “sleazy shitwads” are shining examples of his skill, but my favorite is “you fucking twatwaffle.” Now that’s profanity. He claims that he’s received many insults and while I haven’t seen them, I tend to believe him. There’s not a lot of polite discourse.
I don’t know many of the Sad Puppies. A few are on my Facebook list, or on Eugie’s. I’ve never had any interaction with Larry Correia. Torgersen did tick me off somewhat by writing unnecessary thing on Eugie’s Facebook wall when she was violently ill. But it wasn’t anything evil, just inconsiderate, and not unlike many people on Facebook who think mainly about themselves. At the time I expected people to be more considerate of a girl with cancer, but I admit I should have known better.
And that brings us to now. Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies took almost every nomination for the 2015 Hugos. Vox Day is on the ballot, multiple times as editor. Some categories have the same person repeatedly (three times in Best Novella) because the author was politically pure and the Pups weren’t looking for anything else (really—no other authors wrote a worthwhile Novella in 2014…really?). It doesn’t mean all of the stories nominated were bad. Simply quality had little to do with nomination. It’s a bit sad for the nominees. There will always be an asterisk by their nomination. They’ll always wonder if they could have gotten on the ballot legitimately, for the quality of their work. A few people who were put on the Puppies slate asked to be removed. One said being connected to Correia made him nervous and he wouldn’t want to be in the same room as Day. I applaud them; they gave up a serious chance at an award to keep themselves out of the Puppies Swamp.
The thing is, to paraphrase a greater author than we’re likely to hear from at the Hugo Awards, all this politicking and gaming the system and arguing is sound and fury signifying nothing. The Hugo’s are a popularity award voted on by people each year. It will all flop back to how it was before once the gaming stops. The Pups don’t understand this because many have told the lie so many times they believe it. They actually believe that there is some hidden clique, some leftist cabal, a SMOF, that they are taking the Hugo Awards back from. They believe it was taken by this group, so taking it back will create a new normal. It doesn’t work like that.
I do enjoy their claims that they are broadening the voting fan base to how it should be. Do they really not know that conservatives are not the ones missing from the voting pool? If you actually created a representative voting pool, every award would go to a genre romance or a young adult book—probably a dystopia. That I would like to see.
Instead, all the Pups have managed is to hurt a few individuals and taint the awards for a few years. The taint of racism, sexism, and politics will stick always with the awards given in 2015 and perhaps for a few more years, though in 50 years, that knowledge will fade just to those who study it. I doubt if Day or Correia will care that they have damaged this award they claim to care about. It’s harder to say with Torgersen. He’s young. Maybe when he gets older, maybe when he sees there was no opposing forces that were secretly manipulating things, perhaps when he sees that his world view is myopic, and that all he managed was to be a bit of a dick to a few, and to taint what I think he actually does care about, then maybe he’ll look back at all this with regret. Maybe not. It’s all sound and fury anyway.
Are the Hugos broken? Well, any award that didn’t go to Eugie’s Running on Two Legs a few years ago is broken, but outside of that, it is as broken as every popular vote award. I stopped doing a popular vote for the DCI Film Festival and keep to a juried competition, but in the larger world, you want different types of voting. So, no, I wouldn’t call them broken. Someone played the system. It’s playable. Such is life.
I think my disappointment was just enough to have me write this. That’s about what it is worth. I’m going to the Nebula Award Weekend in a couple months, and I always did prefer the Nebulas to the Hugos. I think I should seek out the Sturgeon Award winners—an award lacking the Hugo taint. There are other awards where quality still counts. I’ll look at those.
What can I say about Mortdecai? It did not have Captain America in it, though I have no doubt that if he would have suddenly appeared, the film would have improved. Nor was there a Hulk; bringing in the Hulk would have made the plot more meaningful. There were no power beams, which I think was a mistake. Nor was there any magic, super speed, or mystical hammers. Any of these would have greatly aided Mortdecai.