Re: Battle Over the Hugos

Bad enough that we have a US Presidential election at the lowest level
ever, and now this.

charley

On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 11:30 AM, Dennis Fischer <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Sci-fi’s Tea Party trolls go to war: Battle over prestigious Hugo Awards
> heats upObsessed with "SJWs" and their own toxic politics, self-righteous
> voters want to bully their way to victory
> SCOTT TIMBERG <http://www.salon.com/writer/scott_timberg/>
>
>
>
> [image: Sci-fi's Tea Party trolls go to war: Battle over prestigious Hugo
> Awards heats up] <http://media.salon.com/2016/04/mad_max_fury_road5.jpg>Immortan
> Joe of "Mad Max: Fury Road" (Credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment)
> The biggest award in science fiction and fantasy has been taken over by
> two groups that could destroy a tradition they claim to be trying to save.
> The Hugo Awards, which in theory is a populist award given by fans, as
> opposed to the Nebula Award given by writers, has been jacked for the
> second year in a row by two conservative groups, the Sad Puppies and the
> Rabid Puppies, and the genre’s annual gathering – WorldCon, this year in
> Kansas City, Missouri – could become very ugly.
> The Sad and Rabid Puppies complain that the field has been taken over by a
> lefty and social-justice bias, and have sent out slates of recommended
> books so that its allies can nominate them for the award’s short list. As
> The Guardian reports
> <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/26/hugo-awards-shortlist-rightwing-campaign-sad-rabid-puppies>,
> “This means that voters on the prestigious awards will now be choosing from
> a shortlist which includes SJWs Always Lie, an essay about ‘social justice
> warriors’ by Rabid Puppies campaign leader Vox Day; a self-published parody
> of erotic dinosaur fiction called Space Raptor Butt Invasion, by Chuck
> Tingle; and My Little Pony cartoon The Cutie Map.” Last year’s conflict
> was similar
> <http://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/sci_fis_right_wing_backlash_never_doubt_that_a_small_group_of_deranged_trolls_can_ruin_anything_even_the_hugo_awards/>,
> and created a lot of bad blood, and this year could be worse.
> It’s worth mentioning that some nominees — like Neal Stephenson, the
> eccentric visionary whose novel “Seveneves” is up for an award — are both
> widely respected across the political spectrum and championed by the
> conservative groups.
> The nastiest of the groups is the Rabid Puppies; leader Vox Day (born
> Theodore Beale) would be right at home on Fox News. He’s said that marital
> rape is impossible
> <http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/05/marital-sex-is-never-rape.html?commentPage=2>since
> “marriage grants consent on an ongoing basis.” His criticism of feminism
> <http://www.wnd.com/2005/08/31677/> has been equally nuanced: “The women
> of America would do well to consider whether their much-cherished gains of
> the right to vote, work, murder and freely fornicate are worth destroying
> marriage, children, civilized western society and little girls.” He’s also
> a video game designer and — no surprise — a Gamergate supporter
> <http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/10/gamergate-open-letter.html>. (To be
> fair, not all of the Puppies — especially the Sad ones — are as extreme as
> he is.)
> To understand the fight, it’s important to think about the field’s history
> for a minute.
>
> It might be nice to think that science fiction, or any kind of literature
> or culture, could be free of ideology. But the best science fiction writers
> have often been deeply political. Perhaps the genre’s greatest-ever
> novelist, H.G. Wells, was a socialist. Frank Herbert’s “Dune” was driven by
> environmentalism. Robert Heinlein was a lefty who became a kind of
> military-worshipping libertarian. Octavia Butler wrote novels suffused
> which feminism and issues of race. One of Ursula K. Le Guin’s most famous
> books, “The Left Hand of Darkness,” looked, without scorn, at a race of
> people who change their genders repeatedly throughout their lives. Philip
> K. Dick managed to be various odd mixtures of left and right, depending on
> the time period. Orson Scott Card, author of “Ender’s Game,” is an opponent
> of same-sex marriage but liberal on some issues.
> George R.R. Martin, the Hugo Award-winning
> <http://www.georgerrmartin.com/about-george/awards-honors/> author of,
> among other works, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the source novels for
> HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” has said that the lists are not just conservative,
> they’re of low quality, and driven by an urge to confront, not to champion
> the best work. He described the mess this way to The Guardian
> <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/26/the-hugo-awards-george-rr-martin-vox-day-and-alastair-reynolds-on-the-prizes-future>
> :
>
> “Throughout the history of SF there has always been a dialogue that’s been
> expressed through stories. If you take Robert Heinlein’s book Starship
> Troopers, that’s a very conservative novel. Harry Harrison wrote Bill the
> Galactic Hero as a direct response to Heinlein’s views. And later, Joe
> Haldeman wrote his own response in The Forever War … but Heinlein loved it.
> That’s how the science fiction community should tackle its differences, not
> through name-calling and personal attacks – through writing.”
>
> If conservative authors want to get their books into award consideration,
> they can go about it the old-fashioned way: There’s no reason all the books
> winning need to come from a left-leaning perspective. But if you are trying
> to make a case for a wider list of possibilities, ballot-stuffing and
> bullying is not the way to do it.
>



-- 
Charley
Desert Sailor