Jun 302015
  June 30, 2015

As anyone who’s followed me in the last few months knows, I support voting No Award for all Hugo categories where a majority of the nominees are illegitimate (“illegitimate” is shorthand and well explained elsewhere). The Novelette category is one of those. It is unnecessary to read the stories to vote as their quality is immaterial. Only one of the nominees should be on the ballot, so voting based on the quality of stories whose existence on the ballot makes a mockery of the Hugos is a huge mistake. Thus, there is no need to read Puppy approved stories.

But I am.

It will not change my vote, but I am reading them. And reading them is causing a whole other level of desire for No Award. I’ve already mentioned my general thoughts on the short stories. The Novelettes…well…here’s where the Pups have found a new way to piss me off.

I love short fiction. Always have. I like it more than novels. It is precise, idea-filled, and satisfying in ways novels never are. From Poe to Bradbury, the best of fantastic fiction has always been in short fiction. And of short fiction, the novelette is my favorite. It has just enough time to dig in, without filler.

So, am I going to complain about the poor quality of the Pups choices? Or that of the single non-Pup choice? No. None of them have thrilled me, but that is not my point here. No, my complaint is that the Pups have managed to nominate something that isn’t a novelette. Short fiction get so few accolades. Certainly its writers get little money and less acclaim. I know that too well. But at least short fiction gets nominated for short fiction awards…except when it doesn’t.

Which leads me to Championship B’tok, a Pup nominee for novelette. Which it isn’t.  A novelette that is.
I’m going to ignore the quality of the writing, and instead, dwell on just what it is and what it isn’t. If I were to review it as a novelette, I’d have to tear it apart for some rather damning issues. It has not much of a beginning and it has no end. It has characters and major events vanish from the story without comment and a good deal of what is happening, and to whom it is happening, is not explained. That makes it just about the worst novelette ever written.

Because it isn’t a novelette. It is a segment, a few chapters from a novel-to-be, set in a still larger series. When considered in that light, there is nothing wrong with it not having the best of openings, since chapter two of a novel doesn’t need to have an opening. Nor is it a problem that it has no ending, since chapter 11 of a novel definitely should not have an ending. A character vanishing? No problem. He can return in chapter 22 and discuss the mysterious problems with the ship he was sent to repair (a chapter not part of this segment). It’s all fine and dandy for part of a novel, provided the rest of the novel gets written, but as a novelette, as a stand alone work of short fiction, it is not worthy of consideration.

More than that, its nomination is an insult to short fiction and short fiction writers. This is not the fault of the author, but of the Pups who nominated part of a novel for a short fiction award. The author is just doing a bit of clever marketing. For those reading his ongoing series, it’s all fine. But this is about an award for short fiction, for the generally over-looked and under-appreciated novelette writers. And the Pups have found another way to fuck it up.

Are Pups unable to see short fiction? They have shown blindness in so many ways I should not be surprised by one more. Like Steven Colbert’s ironic character, they claim not to see race. And a strong case can be made that several of their choices for related works cannot be seen to be related to anything pertinent. Apparently, they cannot see novelettes either.