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So the Hugo Awards were last night, and, as many of you no doubt already know, the Puppies went down in defeat.
For those who haven’t been following the ongoing culture war in the world of science fiction, a group of cultural reactionaries decided to try to strike a blow against what they see as the Social Justice Warriorization of the SF world by essentially stuffing the ballot boxes for the Hugo Award nominations with two slates of their own candidates, dubbed the Sad and the Rabid Puppies. They succeeded in this ignoble task, with many of the categories in the final ballot filled entirely with writers put forward by one or the other of the Puppy slates.
But there’s one peculiar thing about the Hugo ballots: if you don’t like any of the nominees, you can vote for “no award” instead.
And last night, that’s what everyone fed up with the Puppies did. In the five categories where all the nominees were Puppy-nominated, voters picked “no award” over all of them. The only Puppy-endorsed winner? Guardians of the Galaxy, which was such a charmingly entertaining popcorn flick that it transcended Puppy politics altogether
Naturally, the Puppies and their supporters claimed … victory? Well some of them did, anyway.
Doesn't the super-villain always set off the self-destruct when his underground lair is overrun by heroes? Just a thought. #HugoAwards
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) August 23, 2015
Meanwhle, Vox Day — the famously reactionary, racist, woman-hating fantasy author who headed up the Rabid Puppies — tried to spin the giant loss as a sort of nihilistic victory for the forces of reactionary chaos.
In his first blog post about the results of the Hugo votes, Day managed to sort of admit that the Puppies had, yes, failed. Of those voting for “no award,” Day wrote,
They are practicing a scorched earth strategy, and we can certainly assist them in that since we do not value their territory. I still think it was worth trying to take Berlin and end the war in one fell swoop, but even though our attempt break them once and for all failed, that only means that the victory was less than complete.
But in later posts he banished the f-word and tried to convince the world, like Pee Wee Herman after his famous bicycle spill in Pee Wee’s Great Adventure, that he’d “meant to do that.”
In his second post on the Hugo results, Day declared
The five categories burned last night are only the first sparks of the cleansing conflagration that is coming.
In a later post, he wrote
It’s fascinating to see SJWs desperately trying to cling to their Narrative on Twitter and elsewhere. They’re insisting that we’re mad, that we’re crying, that we’re upset, when the fact is that I knew this would be the result this year prior to creating Rabid Puppies.
He knew it all along!
Pee Wee, take it away:
For more details on the Hugos, and more of Vox’s spinning, check out the accounts on Wired and the Wall Street Journal.
Yep. Oh hey, let me quote my fave response in this situation…
That said, everyone please welcome to Helsinki in 2017. Let’s make the world more awesome place!
Vox Day – proof you can’t talk to a psycho like a normal human being.
Ooh, I wonder if VD will actually show up at Helsinki?
Jon H: I kind of doubt that. I mean, the legal stuff they want him for in USA? I think it is illegal here as well, hence “Sure we can chuck him over to you, Mx. US Legal Representatives.”
But don’t quote me, I’m just not even a lawyer.
Sure, his “Castalia House” publishing is squatting in Finnish company space, buuuut… that’s a long story and half.
Love that Wired piece; the writer seemed agog over Beale’s incoherence. But there’s some nasty racism too, with a bizarre segue into a rant about how Africans have no concept of indoor plumbing.
I’m glad to hear this and that I didn’t have to vote myself. Beale is reacting exactly how it was predicted he would if the Rabid Puppies failed, trying to spin the event to make it sound like he wants to save SF and fantasy while social justice activists would burn it all down just to keep him from winning (and had he won he would be going on about how “the people” reject social justice and want “good old fashion SFF”). He’s the one who would gladly burn the Hugos to the ground if he can’t have them, which is part of what this whole charade has been about and why he can consider this a sort-of victory.
Someone please stick a mustache on Teddy-boy’s face so he can twirl it. He’d be a bit more credible that way.
Sarah,
Yeah, I read that piece at Wired, but Day is so vile, and disgusting, that I can’t read anything he says. My brain just nopes the f*** away from anything that comes out of his mouth. It’s like Medusa, you can only approach him sideways while using a reflection
Are the Hugos really so Social Justice Warriorish in the first place? I haven’t been reading a lot of science fiction the past few years, so I may be behind the times, but I remember the “award” itself was a tie pin, even after there were many women winners. (I saw Lois McMaster Bujold at a con once, and she had her Hugos and Nebulas made into a necklace.)
What’s the first sci-fi story?
Aristophanes’ “The Clouds”? A commentary on elitism and its effects on your everyday working class man.
Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” -Where do you start with the political issues in that one?
Jules Verne – Captain Nemo – political rebel and proto-revolutionary.
Yup, we need to act now to stop this insidious attempt to introduce social issues into sci-fi.
Oh, I suppose “Frankenstein” is also a contender for first proper sci-fi story, but that was written by a fake geek girl so it doesn’t count.
The Wired piece is decent, but flawed: it ignores the history of Women, and POC, and non-het writers in SF.
The bigger story is, of course how thoroughly we beat the Canes depubes. This Year.
They get one more bite at the apple (my back of the envelope guess is there are about 500 who voted for the Hugos, between 120-200 of them are Beale supporters). After MidAmericon (next year’s Worldcon) at least one of the two changes to voting (EPH, and 4/6 [which will probably be amended to 5/6 as being a better fit with EPH]) will be in effect.
From there on out slates lose most of their power. Beale can’t “destroy” the Hugos.
But Beale isn’t about winning Hugos. He’s been waging a culture war on SF Fandom since before he ran for SFWA president, and lost. Getting kicked out was the last straw. He wants to destroy fandom. He can’t do that.
So the only issue, in the present, is can he rally his followers to make another run at winning a Hugo. Will they spend more money to lose again? Because he lost, and lost big (none of his actual slate (Guardians of the Galaxy would have been on the ballot regardless).
What burned the GG/Puppy crowd is they didn’t know how No Award works. They thought that having all the candidates meant they couldn’t lose. They think (at least that’s what it looks like from their tweets) the voters cheated.
It might drive them to think they need to do it again, but I don’t think they will be able to sustain the momentum after the slate-making gets fixed. Won’t change their idea that “The SJWs” are secretly in charge, but they know they can’t win against non-puppy nominations.
And I am so happy Helsinki won. Been working toward that since early 2014. No idea how their gonna put me to work. Teddy won’t show. He might even end up leaving the EU because of how the change to VAT works. Since he’s in Italy to duck taxes, and Castalia now has to pay the tax based on the location of the buyer, he’s paying a lot more in taxes; or going to jail. Implementation of VATMOSS is a pain, and i much doubt he wants to pay for that, any more than he is willing to pay the required VAT.
Does Milo Yiannopoulos even know what he’s typing anymore or is it just habitual for him to write nonsense as naturally as breathing? How is voting “no award” the same as a supervillain self-destructing his lair? How the fuck is that a “victory”?
Perhaps I shouldn’t even bother wondering with people like him or Beale – because it seems clear even they don’t know the answer to that. I suppose it’s more the fact I see random people act the same way and have the bad habit of trying to get into discussions with them, which comes off as talking to someone from a very disparate tangent timeline – especially one where everyone is somehow capable of telepathy and can just “tell” what others think instantly.
http://38.media.tumblr.com/4ba75e8c9907ad923624dd2acd9e1435/tumblr_ns6rcn0oQv1u5q5o1o1_500.gif
Don’t even joke about that shit, brah.
Fucking Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is HELLA LEGIT. ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME. 10/10 READ IT EVERY YEAR.
MARY SHELLEY STARTED THE MODERN SCIFI MOVEMENT OF THE 1800s SO DON’T GIVE HER NO SHIT.
DON’T. DON’T YOU DO IT.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/9ff7f0d4e81fc5762a03873bceafc768/tumblr_ngfqlnlMWZ1rm7sbeo1_400.gif
Don’t.
The Hugo is a large rocket. The Nebulas are a very pretty piece of plexiglass with a Nebula inside it. They also make lapel pins to go with it. (the 1984 Hugo needed to be stuffed with plasticene and BBs, because it was a hollow piece of ceramic, and the rocket made it top-heavy).
SF isn’t that SJW (no non-white person has won Best Novel). But it does reflect the wider culture, and the wider culture is becoming more tolerant; which is what Beale, et al, are complaining about.
I’M JUST GONNA PUT THIS TUMBLR POST RIGHT HERE
http://jackiegooutside.tumblr.com/post/127336180136/lotrlocked-validcriticism-divinedorothy#notes
YO YO YO YO WASSUP SAD AND RABID PUPPIES
Alan, I believe that Frankenstein was the second *modern* sci-fi. the first would be… Margaret Cavendish’s “The Blazing World”, which was not only written by a woman but was screamingly feminist.
heh heh heh
Dammit, ninja’d
@takshak
I ninja’d the FUCK out of you.
http://38.media.tumblr.com/e0fcc57ea9583eb0d05c8f8ed984e36e/tumblr_inline_nnngs89fH61sx318y_500.gif
I’ll just have to post my interpretation of the Puppies
http://media.giphy.com/media/NcK52ClIVmlcA/giphy.gif
Never been happy to see a bunch of puppies get kicked, but this was an exception to that rule….
@ Pandapool
Who’s the chap with the pointy ears? I could probably get away with using his passport photo! (well, but for the pointy ears)
You ladies and your books. Everyone knows that video games are the only true art, except for Candy Crush.
@ Panda & takshak
Speaking of Sci fi, either of you read Halo Jones?