Butt-centric author Chuck Tingle out-tingles Vox Day, invites Zoe Quinn to the Hugos

Potted History of the Sad and Rabid Puppies:

The Hugo Awards are one of the most prestigous in Science Fiction and Fantasy. They’re voted on by the members of Worldcon, a convention that moves to a different city each year. The total voting poll is quite low – around a thousand people nominate candidates and maybe 5 times as many vote on the shortlist.

People can purchase a supporting membership for Worldcon for roughly $40 (the exact amount changes depending on who’s running the con), which doesn’t let you attend, but gives you the right to nominate and vote for that year’s Hugos, and nominate for the following year.

The nomination voting is a simple count. Each person can nominate up to 5 items in each category (book, short story, novella, novelette, dramatic presentation short form, dramatic presentation long form, graphic story, editor short fiction, editort long fiction, magazine, semi-prozine, fanzine, fancast, fan writer, the John W. Campbell award for best new writer and any other I’ve forgotten), and whichever 5 entries get the most votes make up the shortlist. The final voting uses single transferrable vote and voters rank in order of preference, with an option for no award to be given.

In 2013, SF author Larry Correia decided he wanted a Hugo, noted the low nominating numbers and figured he could get himself onto the ballot, calling the campaign Sad Puppies. He failed.

In 2014, he tried again, adding rhetoric about how the awards were being taken over by progressive morals, literary fiction, and a silent majority was being ignored. He also suggested a slate of works for everyone to nominate, and a handful of these got onto the ballot and all of them lost. Voxman was one of the suggested nonminees (for Short Story, IIRC) and he finished behind No Award. The 2014 Hugos were in fact noted for having more winners who were women and/or ethnic minorities.

The 2014 campaign garnered a lot of controversy in SF/F circles because slating isn’t banned by the rules of the Hugo awards, but it’s been seen as dirty pool. The only organised slate in the past was the Church of Scientology trying to get a Hugo for Black Genesis by L. Ron Hubbard.

In 2015 Sad Puppies tried again, Correia handing over the reins to Brad R. Torgeson, a John W. Campbell award nominee (the year he was nominated, he wore his military uniform, saying that if he won he could use it to refuse to wear the traditional tiara). Torgeson solicited nominees from fans, saying that his slate would be open and democratic. Notably less than 50% of the fan suggestions made his list, with no explanation given for why. He also offered a full slate of 5 entries per category. Torgesen’s posts about the slates became increasingly angry and inconsistent. At one time he literally complained that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.

At the same time, Voxman ran his own slate called Rabid Puppies, and also offered 5 nominees per category.

The end result was that the shortlist was dominated by Puppy picks. It was also clear that Voxman’s slate was more popular than the Sad Puppies’ one. It was also estimated that less than 300 voters were able to squeeze almost everyone else out.

the night of the Hugos ceremony, the only Puppy suggestion to win an award was Guardians of the Galaxy, which would have been on the ballot regardless of the Puppies. Every other Puppy nomination lost, and every category with only Puppy choices was No Awarded.

Naturally, this meant war.

This year, the Sad Puppies campaign was run by Sarah Hoyt, Kate Paulk and one other woman who’s name I can’t remember. In response to intense criticism the prior year, they did run it as an open and transparent campaign, offering a list of all recommendations they recieved weighted by the number of recommdations each got. Their campaign was largely a failure.

However, Voxman ran a slate of 5 items per category, and while his 2015 slate was all right-wing stuff, mostly published by his own vanity press, this year he mixed in some of his own stuff, some things meant to really annoy people (Space Raptor Butt Invasion, his SJWs always lie ebook, the Safe Space as Rape Room blog post that accuses the SF community of harbouring rapists and paedophiles), and a bunch of popular works that likely would have been finalists anyway, like Sandman: Overture and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.

This was he can declare victory one way or another, because he’ll prove whatever blah blah blah.

Aw. I wish Chuck Tingle would troll me. Getting trolled by a surrealist is good for the mind.

Two years of vandalism doesn’t mean 50 years of history is erased. And rules changes to negate some of the influence of slates are due to be ratified this year so Voxman can’t pull the same shit again to the same degree. There’s further rules changes being proposed as well to figure out how to stop openly offensive work from being slated onto the shortlist too.

Oh yes, and later on Correia and Torgeson tried to dial back their connections to Voxman when he started to link the slating campaigns to his usual homophobia and sexism.

If it made Vox cry hot snotty tears of butthurt, I might just say it.

PS first post from the sweet new computer!

@Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III

Holy cow, that was great. Did he get that sword at the mall? Does he display it near a hologram of some kanji he misunderstands?

@Mike Hisandry – Just do a google image search for vox day flaming sword. Protip: make sure you do not take a large swig of coffee before doing so, or you may ruin a keyboard.

Incidentally, this bullshit? Is also going on in the horror literature community.

Oh, god, what fresh hell is happening there?

Incidentally, this bullshit? Is also going on in the horror literature community.

Sigh. I’m more into horror movies than literature (something I should fix!) so I’m not all that personally invested, even as a horror fan, but still, bummer.

I’m not surprised or anything. But saddened.

It’s Sydney Padua’s Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage–some people nominated it under Graphic Novel, and others under Related Work.

To supplement what’s already been described about this whole mess, I’ll add that VOXMAN became persona non grata in the sf community after referring to fellow sf author NK Jemison as an animal…and on searching for a description of this I discover that David covered it two years ago:

https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/04/24/hugo-nominated-vox-day-even-worse-than-you-think/

Re: Lady_Zombie’s link

1. For an author, David Riley has no idea how plurals or punctuation work. Always nice to see a four-dot ellipsis in the wild, though.

2. Can anybody explain why Nick Mamatas went on a rant about eeevil liberals and BOTH SIDES in the middle of a post ostensibly agreeing that Nazis are bad?

guest | May 6, 2016 at 4:07 pm
If you want to hear the latest Chuck Tingle, with bonus fan anecdotes, check this out:

Is that Mark from Mark Reads Twilight?! 😀

I loved reading that. It was a glorious reading that really helped me formulate Babby’s First Feminist Literature Critiques.

I would have read his 50SoG readthrough too, but the other sporking I read of it (by Das Mervin and Geyhai over on LiveJournal, who have also sporked the fuck out of Twilight) actually made me have a panic attack (not the fault of the sporkers, but rather what they were sporking) and no amount of awesome Deadpool imagery or trigger warnings could have prepared me for the two hours of trying to slow my heart down and to stop crying.

Rachel, I love you and you are the wind beneath my wings.

It’s Sydney Padua’s Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage–some people nominated it under Graphic Novel, and others under Related Work.

Aw, man, Lovelace and Babbage is genius.