I just stumbled across this “Sad Puppy” campaign, and apparently wingnuts, no matter what their interests, spend all day long nursing grudges and butthurt. I gather from what this is all about is that the teahadists felt not enough rightwing white male sociopath writers were acknowledged for their excellence, so they ganged up with the gamergate buffoons to ballot stuff the Hugo awards. Is that about right?
I’m a grumpy person, but I am happy. What must life be like to live your life feeling this miserable and aggrieved. Losers.
MattF
Crooked Timber has a post on that:
http://crookedtimber.org/2015/04/05/sucky-hugos/
My own recent sf faves are Ann Leckie’s two ‘Ancillary’ novels. Soon to be a trilogy.
maeve
Sad puppies got on the ballot – which is not the same as winning – voting should close the end of July. People can vote for multiple things – preferential balloting means that your second choice is taken into account and voting includes “None of these deserve to win” – which can win in a given category.
John Scalzi has good updates via http://whatever.scalzi.com/
Specifically about Hugo voting:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/04/04/a-note-about-the-hugo-nominations-this-year/
SuperHrefna
Yeah. They got together to put together a slate ( two slates actually, there was the Sad Puppies slate and then the Rabid Puppies slate, and no I am not making that up) and voted them in. They managed to dominate pretty much every category except best novel. I’m sad, especially because this was my first year as a Hugo nominator, but I’m determined to take my voting packet ( voters get sent most of the nominated stories/ novels), give everything a go and vote strictly according to my response to the actual material. I won’t let those fools turn this into a game(ergate).
Corner Stone
I just assumed all awards were gamed, one way or another. If there is a financial reason involved the results will always be skewed to benefit someone.
Joseph Nobles
This is the first I’ve heard about the Sad Puppy thing. So I googled it. Came across a Brad R. Torgerson blog where it appears to be organized. And I found a blog post explaining the rationale. Go do a search for Sad Puppies 3 The Unraveling of An Unreliable Field. You’ll find it.
Basically the argument is that modern sci-fi fantasy writing is a bait and switch. Before, you saw a picture of a starship on the cover and you knew you were getting a “rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds.” Or you saw “saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women.” And so on. But now you’re liable to get a “story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings” or “about the evils of capitalism and the despotism of the wealthy” or gay issues or feminism!
And my response is, what the hell? Who are this numbskulls who seem to have never read any classic science fiction or fantasy AT ALL?
I’m only going to choose one example, but the very word “robot” came from a play called R.U.R., a science fiction dystopia written to expose industrial capitalism. It just boggles my mind that thimbleheadness like this has just swept the Hugos.
jeffreyw
Yeah, that’s about what it sounded like to me. Lots of anger that women and minorities were getting the awards. Jo Walton’s The Just City comes to mind, and the Chinese guy that wrote the The Three Body Problem.
Corner Stone
Man, I just can’t even with that Taco Bell commercial with the two elderly white people in the car.
MattF
@Corner Stone: The point (IMO) is that sf has a bunch of quite specific sub-genres– and you’d like to find a novel that’s good to read rather than one that massages some specific fetish. More easily said than done.
Tenar Darell
They were really upset about Ann Leckie’s win, for some strange reason related to her use of feminine pronouns in Ancillary Justice. /yes, sarcasm intetended
Jay C
@maeve:
I read that CT post, too: I was amused to note that the “author” who regularly garners massive voting is “Noah Ward”
I guess this is one of the downsides of living in the Age of the Internet and social media: I can’t imagine bullshit campaigns like this being too effective back in the Good Old Days; i.e. the antiquity of the 20th Century…..
shell
Love SF, but really, do that many people care about the Hugo awards?
CaseyL
There are actually two groups undermining the Hugos: Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies.
SciFi fandom has undergone a lot of self-examination in the last few years, dealing with issues of harrassment and marginalization.
This incident of Hugo ballot stuffing started when a few extremely distasteful individuals were told they were no longer welcome in organized fandom, and an entire slate of SFWA magazine editors were shown the door. They didn’t take it well. Rather than understand that their gender and racial attitudes were unacceptable, they decided they comprised the One True Fandom, and were being victimized/censored/whatever. These are the Sad Puppies.
Vox Day, a particularly awful person, has taken it a step further, and reached out to his peers in the Gamer Gate sewer to vote on Hugo nominations. These are are the “Rabid Puppies.” Most of them don’t read SF; they just voted who VD told them to vote for, and have taken to Twitter to proclaim their victory over SJWs.
Both Sad and Rabid Puppies are happy to destroy the credibility of the Hugo Awards, since that’s the only way they would win any.
Corner Stone
@MattF:
I thought the whole point of a sub-genre was to encourage me to massage my specific fetish?
MattF
@Corner Stone: As Baby LeRoy says, “Chacun à son goo.“
While Trash Liberal
I’m a lifelong fan of science fiction. I want to be upset by the SP campaign, but it largely magnifies an existing problem with science fiction awards, publicity, and the greater problem of creative writing in the modern era. The Hugos haven’t been indicative of quality to me for a long while. The days of Neuromancer changing the landscape and the Hugo expanding Gibson’s profile and lifting the cyberpunk subgenre to relevance are long gone.
Wingnuts want Cultural Relevance in the same manner as the Soviet regime. It’s like sangreal… The outsized political power transitioning to cultural currency. Twitchy, poll gaming, conservative cultural Internet magazines that hatewatch Girls… They are perversely chasing relevance like it’s analogous to power.
So I don’t think it’s entirely about nursing grudges insomuch as using any means available to remake reality (or at least the appearance) in the image of nostalgic patriarchy. Science fiction was one of the original avenues for critiquing the 50s patriarchy as non-idyllic, and the SP campaign is swatting at the genre to try and make it a tool for right wing dream making.
Corner Stone
@CaseyL:
Not endorsing their behavior, but I guess my question is more to – what legitimacy previously existed?
To me it’s similar to other things like Cannes, or Sundance or SXSW. They hold little credibility in this era of TED talks and VC vultures squeezing every last dollar out of formerly authentic events. Burning Man, anyone?
max
I gave up SF about two decades ago because a) I was bored with it and b) this kind of techno-libertarian horseshit.
Feh.
Sounds like they’re fetishizing rehashing genre tropes than actual new ideas, and all those SF classics of yesterdecades were all about new ideas. This sounds more like they want manly romance.
max
[‘Blah. There’s always the Nebulas.’]
EriktheRed
WTF is “Sad Puppy”??
Keith G
I have read and re-read John’s comment that anchors this thread and I still can not find even one half of a fuck that I can give to this.
SuperHrefna
@Corner Stone: The Hugos aren’t voted on by a jury, they’re fan awards and anyone who wants to can sign up to be part of the process for about $40. So that makes them different from the awards you mention. Since SFF is largely read by geeks and nerds there is a lot of soul searching introspection that goes into putting together most people’s nominations. This was the third year of the Sad Puppies rallying around a slate, last year they got one slot from each category, and the first year the noms have been so thoroughly distorted. Apparently WorldCon is looking into a fix.
Tenar Darell
@Corner Stone: There’s a recent tradition of denigrating the mainstreaming of fandom by a certain subset of fandom that feels it is losing control of all “their” beloved stories. Rather than glorying in the fact that they’ve won, and that everything is allowed to be part of science fiction and fantasy now, they’re intent on setting boundaries on the stories. It’s growing pains, and boundary setting taken to an extreme. They want their treehouse back, and to put the “No gurls allowed!” sign back up on the ladder. They don’t seem to care if they damage the tree in this process.
raven
@Keith G: ding
SuperHrefna
@Keith G: S’OK, I couldn’t care less about sports. Be a boring world if we all had the same interests, wouldn’t it?
dubo
This seemed pretty pathetic, and then I learned that the whole thing is organized by a shitty author trying to get his own works on the ballot by saying “vote for me to stick it to the SJWs!” and now it seems REALLY pathetic
Gin & Tonic
@Keith G: I’ve been attempting to clean out the garage. Maybe I can find one there for you.
Pogonip
Speaking of sad puppies, Lovey and Thurston are very sad because they fear there will not be a final pupdate before they part company.
Corner Stone
@SuperHrefna: Final minute for Rockets v OKC!
Keith G
@SuperHrefna: Well, when a thread is introduced with such allusions to sturm und drang, I thought that it might be a bit higher up the relevance/interest hierarchy.
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: You keep your fucks in the garage? Kinky!
While Trash Liberal
@dubo:
But that is what wingnut welfare is all about! Assholes turning their poo into gold. Shoot an unarmed minority kid–dollars! Trumpet your bigotry about serving pizzas at hetero weddings (WTF?!)–dollars! People are attuning their sensibilities to the grift and acting accordingly.
Keith G
@Gin & Tonic: I am cleaning kitchen cupboards/pantry. Pulling out all those things accumulated during the baking season, sorting and ejecting as necessary. Also doing a kitchen tool cull.
NotMax
Kiddies probably think Hugo Gernsback is a brand of wine cooler.
Mike J
@max:
You’ve not read William Giibson. Or any of the people the losers who organized this hate.
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: Two point game with 5 seconds left!
3pt game with 3.4 left! This is nuts!
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: All sorts of stuff in there; you never know. All except a car.
TooManyJens
Sad/Rabid Puppies are the Tea Party (and in some cases, the Stormfront; seriously, some of these guys are that bad) of SF/F. They firmly believe that they and only they are the “real”
AmericansSF/F fans, and that they are entitled to be recognized as such.Some of them have stated outright that the only reason works they don’t like have been winning Hugos is because people voted for them solely because they were written by women/people of color/etc. — in other words, out of political correctness rather than on the merits. It’s just like the way the teabaggers are sure Obama couldn’t possibly have gotten elected because the majority of voters wanted him to enact his policies, so it must have been a combination of white guilt and vote-stealing..
Inasmuch as there’s an ACORN in all of this, it’s probably John Scalzi; he’s hosted discussions on his blog where readers are encouraged to recommend works they think are worthy of nomination, which is exactly like pushing a slate with the explicit goal of keeping the politically disfavored off the ballot, because logic.
The degree to which GamerGate has been involved is disputed, but it’s probably not zero, since at least a few Puppies supporters have been spotted asking for their support in defeating the “SJWs”.
Mnemosyne
@SuperHrefna:
Maeve’s comment just above yours links to a good explanation by Scalzi of how to strategically use your “No Award” option to avoid rewarding any Puppies.
SuperHrefna
@Mnemosyne: I’ll be using my “no award” option when I need to! I’m just leery of playing their game by “no awarding” everything on the puppy slates just because they were on the puppy slates. I don’t want to do the very thing I’m objecting to by voting politically rather than on the merits of the work. So I’ll give it all a go ( I’m not promising to read everything all the way though, but I’ll try everything) and only vote for the things I think are actually deserving of an award, and I’ll “no award” the rest.
xenos
Didn’t James Tiptree and Samuel Delany and Ursular Kroeber put this cap to bed by winning Hugo and Nebula back in the 70s?
If there is a market for the militarists at Bean and the creepy Gor-ites they should have their own bloody awards.
WereBear
@Keith G: This seems to be a theme in your life. Get help with that.
rikyrah
I guess good enough for thee but not me
…………………….
Monsanto Defender Says GMOs Are Safe Then Refuses to Taste Them
POSTED ON MARCH 30, 2015
By Lyonel Laverde-Hansen
Last week, the chemical giant Monsanto got embroiled in an unexpected public-relations fracas. Dr. Patrick Moore, a supporter for Monsanto’s genetically-modified products, was being interviewed by the French television station Canal Plus.
Moore is not a Monsanto employee, but leader of the Allow Golden Rice campaign. This is a movement to distribute large amounts of this rice for poor people, mostly in Asia, where there is a large deficiency of the crucial nutrient vitamin A. The Allow Golden Rice Campaign has been opposed vehemently by environmentalist organizations because it was a product of genetically-modified engineering.
Moore is passionate on the subject. “This is a crime against humanity,” he said. “All we ask is that Greenpeace and their allies make an exception for Golden Rice to their opposition to GM crops. Millions of lives are at stake.”
In the interview, Moore stated that Roundup, Monsanto’s commercially-known weed killer, was safe for human intake, but pointedly refused to drink a glass containing the liquid.
Apparently Moore thought the interview was to focus on his “golden rice” campaign. He argued that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was not the cause of increasing cancer rates in Argentina.
“You can drink a whole quart of it, and it won’t hurt you,” Dr. Moore said.
After having said that, the reporter informed Moore that they had a glass with the herbicide in it, and suggested he drink it. Moore rebuffed that offer, by saying, “I’m not stupid.”
http://themedicalblog.net/2015/03/30/monsanto-defender-says-gmos-are-safe-then-refuses-to-taste-them/
Mnemosyne
@SuperHrefna:
That’s Scalzi’s position, too. The “how to” is more because a lot of people find the instant runoff voting to be a little confusing and don’t realize that they can rank “no award” in the middle of their choices and still nominate people below it if they choose.
Reading through the comments at Scalzi’s place, it sounds as though the category that was truly gamed is the novella category since the guy who organized the “Sad Puppies” campaign just happened to get three nominations in that category. So that may be a worthy spot to consider using your “no award” vote in second or third place.
Marc
The Hugo awards have roughly the same credibility as internet polls. Anyone who pays cash gets to vote, and they’ve been gamed by cliques for years. They’ve also been used as a vehicle for making political points – just different ones than those that animate this crowd – and, yea, their politics definitely aren’t mine. There is also a lot of SF that has, for me, an annoying libertarian / reactionary aesthetic. And that’s always been true.
I’d like to see something that relates the awards to something approaching literary merit. But this is not a case of reactionaries attacking a pure system. The comments to that article are pretty informative, or at least they give a different perspective. An earlier article by the same author makes this point:
http://www.jasonsanford.com/blog/2014/5/20/the-coming-hugo-awards-ballot-stuffing-arms-race
Iowa Old Lady
I’m rereading Robert McKee’s STORY, which is partly about the value of the stories a culture tells itself. We get stories in a lot of forms, including sports, I’d say, where there are opposing sides and heroes and triumph and failure. McKee argues that a culture dominated by clichéd, stereotyped stories doesn’t grow.
The Hugo stuff is small potatoes, but it’s symptomatic of how people in dominant positions don’t want to hear other stories. Look at the emphasis we see on the “narrative” in the MSM. We need true stories.
schrodinger's cat
I did not understand a word of this post.
ETA: Apart from Star Trek and its various avatars, I am not much into Sci-Fi. Mostly because the emphasis is on fiction and the science out for lunch.
Mike Adamson
Vox Day says to get those SJW’s and feminazis and fix their wagons!
Nemo_N
It’s all entirely amusing.
Warren Terra
@rikyrah:
Your headline is inaccurate. The researcher/spokesperson refused to chug a glass of liquid that was supposedly glyphosate at some unknown concentration proffered to him by a hostile questioner, which is (1) completely normal behavior, even if he did indeed believe glyphosate was completely safe when used at anything remotely close to recommended concentrations; and (2) almost completely different from your claim that he refused to eat GMO food.
There are some real issues with respect to GMOs and to glyphosate – but they’re almost entirely environmental/ecological (plus some Intellectual Property angles); the constant ill-informed or even dishonest attempts to concoct a nonexistent consumer-health issue do little more that discredit people who could be calling attention to actual issues with GMOs.
Annamal
@max:
I don’t keep up with a lot of science fiction (I tend more towards the slightly odder fantasy) but I really did enjoy Ann Leckie’s work (I’m a massive sucker for AI stories) and of course Loic McMaster Bujold has written a lot in the last 20 years that might be worth reading.
Come to think of it, I quite liked Terry Pratchett’s stab at Sci Fi (not as earth shattering as his Discworld novels but interesting nonetheless).
What I’m saying is that there is some awesome stuff out there under the Sci Fi banner.
Warren Terra
@Annamal:
Indeed. In general, if you have found nothing of merit in any expressive genre, the failing is more likely to be in your powers of perception or especially your dedication to actually looking for merit than it is in the whole of the genre. There is an awful lot of truly terrible Sci-Fi, and no small amount of great stuff – moreover, many different kinds of great stuff, great in different ways and appealing to different people. You could say the same for Fantasy, and presumably for Country Music or even Teeniebopper music.
Maybe you could exclude conceptual art, but that’s possibly just my own blind spot.
RSA
@Warren Terra:
It’s amazingly common even for intelligent people to confuse “I don’t like X” with “X has no merit.” (Some people even go further: “And if you like X, you suck.”)
Anne Laurie
@xenos:
Well, that era could be marked as the start of the current social war, at least. (If you want a laff, look up Robert Silverberg’s magisterial essay on how that mysterious ‘James Tiptree’ person could not possibly be a woman, because MUSCULAR PROSE ofwhichwimmenisincapable.) The same era, specifically Star Trek, brought “too many” women into “their” fandom — and we didn’t even realize that ‘femmefan’ was meant as a compliment, mostly!
“The Sixties”, which were mostly the 1970s, broke a whole lot of secure social niches. There’s still sub-niches where The Good Old Days are
mournedfiercely defended (and the Hugo Awards, much as I respect them, are still chosen by a tiny subset of the larger subset ‘science fiction/fantasy’ readers), but the existence of the Big Bang Theory indicates how thoroughly that argument has been lost. It’s not just haha sci-fi dweebs; the specific minutia of being a sci-fi dweeb are now hilarious to the general channel-surfing audience. “We” have taken over a chunk of the general culture… and that means “we” just aren’t so special any more. There’s no longer an sf ghetto… which means the (straight, white, male, aspiring-middle-class traditionalists) who dreamed of one day taking their ‘well-earned place’ atop the leadership of that ghetto have been deprived of their NATURAL RIGHTS!!!!Warren Terra
I’m not terribly well informed about James Tiptree Jr (I am aware it’s a pseudonym for a well-respected woman sci-fi author, that’s about it), but Wikipedia say her actual gender became widely known only quite late (unless it’s different among the subset of people voting for the Hugos?), and the success of a woman publishing under a male pseudonym isn’t an obviously inspiring sign of acceptance for female authors
Smedley the uncertain
@CaseyL:
SFWA??
SJWs ??
Frankensteinbeck
@Tenar Darell:
Ancillary Justice was AWESOME. It won a Hugo? It deserved to. I was worried that the author would wimp out the ending, but no. The main character’s fascinating viewpoint – not just sexless, but unable to comprehend gender beyond ‘X person told me to use He’ – is really immersive. It keeps you always balanced that the character isn’t human and can’t be human, only a starship in a human body.
Annamal
@Frankensteinbeck: Have you tried John Scalzi’s latest book Lock In?
I really enjoy his work (it’s sort of the opposite of flowery but damn entertaining), it does some interesting stuff with gender and disability and it richly deserves the TV pilot they are currently making.
WereBear
@Warren Terra: True. It was an inspiring example of how good woman authors can be.
maeve
@Warren Terra:
Even when gender was known women had gender ambiguous names
Andre Norton
Marion Zimmer Bradley
C. J. Cherryh
etc.
Origuy
@Smedley the uncertain: Science Fiction Writers of America: a trade organization for, obviously, science fiction writers. You have to be a published author to join.
Social Justice Warriors: the name given by GamerGaters (don’t ask) to people who think that fighting for social justice is a bad thing.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Warren Terra:
Always Sturgeon’s Law.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Smedley the uncertain:
SFWA= Science Fiction Writers Association.
SJW = Social Justice Warriors
used by Gamergaters and MRAs as a pejorative.
Tenar Darell
@Warren Terra: Jenny Holzer (text based conceptual art) tumblr.. My favorite currently
FEAR IS THE MOST ELEGANT WEAPON
YOUR HANDS ARE NEVER MESSY.
Tenar Darell
@Frankensteinbeck: The follow up novel (planned trilogy, IIRC) Ancillary Sword was good. Lacking in the “mind blown” at world creation prowess, as all sequels must be, but well written and exciting to read anyway. Worth picking up.
@Annamal: I really enjoyed that one. He’s always fun to read, but the conceptualization of what being locked-in would be like, with the addition of a detective story really impressed me. ETA I will sound like I’m gushing, but it made me think of Caves of Steel.
Annamal
@Tenar Darell: John Scalzi strikes me as one of those authors like Neil Gaiman who start off with a certain amount of raw talent and just keep on learning and improving their craft over time.
If nothing else, the whole Sad Puppy thing has convinced me that I need to read the Goblin Emperor (which was on my to do list).
I think a lot of the slate authors might not realise quite what they have accidently signed up for when it comes to GamerGate.
TerryC
@maeve: I met C. J. Cherryh a couple of times. What a sweet and far-thinking person.
maeve
@Annamal:
Read “The Goblin Emperor” – it is one of the most original novels I’ve read in the last year. Sure – it seems a cliche – elves and goblins and dirigibles – but the elves and goblins just happen to be races/nations that are there and steam-dirigible thing is not gratuitous.
Iowa Old Lady
@maeve: I just started that today! Some other folks were raving about it too.
maeve
@TerryC:
When I lived in Oklahoma I helped judge a kid’s sci-fi art art exhibit at an science museum (invited because I taught science) – I learned her brother was a Sci-Fi artist, her last name was originally “Cherry” but she added the h. Never met her loved her work, Not surprised to learn she is a fascinating person.
marduk
Matthew David Surridge writes something upward of a bazillion very polite words about the Sad Puppies / Rabid Puppies slates, why he refused the Hugo nod he received as a result of appearing on the slate, why he doesn’t want to be associated with them, and why he thinks they’re wrong about basically everything.
Then the very first commenter responds
The mind boggles.
TooManyJens
@marduk: Sad Puppies cannot fail, they can only be failed. Or something.
gwangung
@Nemo_N:
Not really. They’re just following the template of how reactionaries are gaming all the institutions they can get their hands on, from leisure activities to gerrymandering voting districts.
Dismiss it at your peril.
mainmata
@Joseph Nobles: from a lifelong sci fi reader I say to you Bravo, exactly that! Idiots (probably gamers).
Tehanu
@TooManyJens:
This, exactly. I’m sorry to say that I used to date one of those wingnut writers; he seemed like a nice guy but I didn’t like his books, and later realized that the reason I didn’t like his books was that he was only a nice guy if you were white. As for the Hugos, it’s pathetic that the only way they can win is to get people to vote for them out of political correctness — pathetic and hilarious, of course.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Joseph Nobles:
Looks like the Sad Puppies never read Robert E Howard rofl.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So going by the on line sci-fi game I admin for, I assume the sad puppet ballet is mainly Halo fan fiction. Amazing how many white guys get their Nazi on with Scifi. The other hilarious thing is the number of old white men playing characters based on character archetypes from classic sci-fi that are critics of capitalism and viewing their characters as vindication of capitalism.
Pogonip
The only Sad Puppy I really read enough to be familiar with is Larry Correia. Haven’t read any of his books–he writes gun porn, not my thing–but I read his site. He’s a nice man with a quirky sense of humor who, I gather, has been told once too often that he does not count as a Person Of Color, so I think he’s pretty sensitized to leftist science fiction writers. I also read John Scalzi’s site. He’s one of the leading anti-Puppies. He is a nice man with a standard sense of humor who I think has become pretty sensitized to people bitching about leftist science fiction writers. In short, the whole thing seems to come down to the two sides yelling “I’m sick of you, go away!” at each other. And since going away is the same as granting victory to those jerks, it’ll continue for a long time to come. Fortunately, the tempest is confined entirely to their teapot; it seems people do not walk into the bookstore and scan the racks for Hugo winners. So we can all resume ignoring it.
Pogonip
P.S. Mr. Scalzi is anti-Puppy, not anti-puppy. Although he has not taken a formal position on the latter, I have seen enough pictures of his dog to be pretty sure he approves of small-p puppies. As do I. Cole, we’re running out of time for a final pupdate!
EthylEster
@NotMax:
Kiddies probably haven’t a clue about WTF a wine cooler is.
I’m no kiddie and I know what a wine cooler is, but I’ve haven’t a clue about Hugo Gernsback.
EthylEster
Richard Feynman quote:
EthylEster
Richard Feynman quote:
He also stated that members of prestigious groups like NAS, etc spent most of their time deciding who was prestigious enough to be invited to join.
EthylEster
@schrodinger’s cat:
A common response I have to many B-J posts these days. At least this one was easy to find out about (should one give a shit)..and Cole supplied his own interpretation.
But I feel your pain.
EthylEster
@Warren Terra:
But (and maybe you know this) one of the developers of RoundUp used to drink a glass of it as part of his “testifying” to the safeness of this pesticide. I expect it was a drink he prepared for himself but I wonder if anyone would care to drink a glass of RoundUp now.
mds
@Anne Laurie:
Which just underscores the Puppies’ point, since someone with such a “politically incorrect” worldview has obviously never been nominated for a Hugo or Nebula Award, let alone won.
(For the uninitiated, Robert Silverberg is in fact the recipient of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2005. The difference being that regardless of his putative political views, he’s written stuff that enough SF fans think is actually good, rather than purely reactionary pig shit. Likewise, Vernor Vinge is an anarcho-capitalist libertarian sort, and he won his last Hugo Award in 2007, apparently before all the left-wing feminists and ethnic minorities got in and spoiled everything.)
Raven on the Hill
One connection with the right wing we are familiar with: Theordore Beale, the exceptionally nasty Vox Day of the lachrymose juvenile canines, is the son of Robert Beale, who from 2000-2002 sat on the board of WorldNetDaily. The father has now been jailed for 11 years for making a “sovereign citizen” defense against tax evasion and the son is now living in Switzerland, apparently to avoid US taxes.
One exceptionally sad thing about this: the concluding volume of Patterson’s minutely researched biography of Heinlein was pushed off the ballot by these machinations. Patterson died around the time the book was released and the book was only eligible this year. If one needed any proof that this was simple destructiveness, rather than a misguided attempt to redress an imbalance in the balloting, there it is; if any of the pups had done their homework, they would likely have nominated it–Heinlein is one of their heroes.