Re: The whole "Puppies" furor

In article <vig6du$1vtgk$1@dont-email.me>,
Mike Van Pelt  <usenet@mikevanpelt.com> wrote:

In article <robertaw-D56189.21595429112024@news.individual.net>,
Robert Woodward  <robertaw@drizzle.com> wrote:

I once spent a good deal of time studying the 2015 Hugo nominations.
While the Rabid Puppies were definitely block voting, the Sad Puppies
appeared to be different. Either there were secret puppies with their
own nominations lists (which overlapped the Sad Puppy list) or many of
the Sad Puppies were only nominating works that they had read. If the
latter was the case, while they could be accused of ungood literary
taste, was this block voting?

>
My understanding of the "puppies" thing was that the "Sad
Puppies" (name inspired by that "Give to the Humane Society"
ad with all the forlorn looking doggies in it) thought that
the kinds of stories they liked (and thought a bunch of
other people liked) were getting short shrift at the Hugos,
so made a list of what they considered worthy works, and said
"Here's some stuff we like that you might like as well; if so,
consider nominating it for a Hugo."

Nah, it started off as a scheme to get Larry Correia in particular
a Hugo, and "worthy works" were defined as "stuff Larry wrote",
to which "stuff Larry's pals" wrote being added later on. They
had an evolving set of justications, often contradictory because
it doesn't seem to have occurred to them people could read their
old posts. 

I don't see anything wrong with that, though it sure got a
lot of people upset.

Because block-voting was legal (so the votes couldn't be tossed)
but completely against convention.

A separate issue, of course, from Vox Diaboli, who glommed
onto the campaign with his "Rabid Puppies" block, which,
as you said, was definitely block voting.

Nope. Vox got invited in by Larry and then hijacked the idea
with more effective organization. The Rabid Puppies are an
offshoot of the Sad Puppies but definitely connected to them.

The upset seemed to me to be a lot more about politics than
about quality of the works.  And conflating the original
(arguably legitimate) campaign with the (reprehensible)
block vote.

Please point out to me the Sad/Rabid Puppies nominees (human
shields aside) you think were worthy of a Hugo.

(Chuck Tingle being a hilarious exception. VD definitely misjudged
that particular human shield)

I wasn't involved in either group, being a non-attender of
Worldcon that year.
>
I'd kind of lost interest in the Hugos years before, anyway;
little of the kind of thing I like ever seems to get nominated,
at least, since "The Mote in God's Eye."  I note in particular
that no stories from Analog *ever* get nominated.  (Or, hardly
ever.  I can't think the last time I saw one on the list.)

It really can't help that the Big Three really have not weathered
the last 40 years very well. I don't see them on magazine shelves
anymore, whereas it's easy to find the online magazines. Obs
distributor consolidation is part of that but then there are
issues like Asimov's letting their online board devolve into a
sewer before dropping it and F&SF making it next to impossible
to determine if they are still in business at all.

--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll