[QuickTidal]

This MIGHT have been better served in the discussion forum...but I felt it belonged in here more.

I could explain this whole thing to you guys (if you don't already know about it), but better to let the authors do the heavy lifting.

George R. R. Martin wrote a long post about it: HERE

And then Sad Puppies-side is rebutted from Larry Correia: HERE

Now, I urge you to read BOTH posts. They are both long, but both are worth reading.

And I'd be interested in your varied thoughts.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 15 April 2015 - 01:40 PM

[Grief]

Having only read those two posts, I think Martin does come over a bit idealistically regarding the award (though it may just be that I don't value awards that much). Pretty much every award seems to have some sort of politics involved. I think Correia makes a fairly good point in saying that it's a stretch to claim the award as such an idealistic/widely representative thing, while also claiming it belongs to such a select group, but that just seems to be something that awards do. His argument that an award shouldn't claim to represent a broader group than it does applies to tons of awards (The Nobel most obviously), and I'm not really sure if that's a matter relating to the people involved in the award or relating to the public perception of the award (which in fairness, I suppose he's trying to change).

I also think it's a bit silly to get outraged about him apparently gaming the system more effectively than people have in the past. As Martin admits, that's been going on for a long time, and beyond that it's simply a question of degree. Which just highlights that awards are often a bit silly. I also think that it's fair for Correia to question that if the gaming only bugs people now, and they didn't complain about it in the past when other people won it, is it really the degree of gaming that's bothering them or who's doing it? It's not a subject I'm very well-read on, so maybe the degree of gaming suddenly did ramp up monumentally (or seem to) and it is more of an issue in itself. I also don't really have an opinion about the award in general -- whether it is biased against people based on certain things, rather than their work, etc. Or rather, I'm sure it is biased in some ways, but I wouldn't know which particular ways for that particular award. If it does have the bias Correia suggests, it's not especially difficult to see that someone outside of that camp (Martin) might not really notice. I'm also not especially sure what solution he wants. I don't think opening it up to the public for example would reduce campaigning and political voting at all. There are plenty of awards out there with different systems, and I'm not sure how many avoid campaigning and politics.

It's reasonably interesting, but kind of seems to boil down to issues that seem sort of inherent to awards in the first place.

[Illuyankas]

GRRM and I have our differences but Larry Correia is literally stuck in high school rejection mode. "Bitter culture warriors" is a phrase used by mental children.

Oh wait, I got further!

Quote

Perpetually Outraged, Searching For Offense, Quick to Accuse Racism/Sexism/Homophobia/Privilege/Patriarchy, Holier Than Thou, Politics Before Fun, Unholy Cross Between Communists and Puritans, Twitter Lynch Mob Forming, Career Sabotaging, Social Justice Crusaders.

This man deserves to have no career.

fake edit: he has no mercy! man I sure want to give him awards and not wedgies

[Gorefest]

It really feels like another one of those insider riots. I fully understand where these Sad Puppy guys are coming from, after reading both blogs. But I honestly have to say that it doesn't really tickle me either way. Surely most people in the internet age have cottoned on to the given that most 'public' awards out there are rigged or skewed beyond fairness. It's no different from any other major 'accolade' out there. The Singles Top 40 in most countries is a laughing stock and easily rigged, as many people have shown (take the whole 'Killing in the name of' Christmas no. 1, or 'Ding dong the witch is dead' with Thatcher's funeral), Eurovision has practically made their blatant voting bias into an event of its own, etc. Seeing 'HUGO Award' on the front of a book when I was a teenager did wow me, but that was back in the early nineties. These days it might catch my attention in as far as it may make me read the book synopse on the back, but it won't give me the idea anymore that I am standing with the new masterpiece of SF/Fantasy in my hands. Word of mouth, fan sites and recommendation market sites like Amazon are the way to go these days for the vast majority of book buyers. They will have far more impact that an archaic HUGO award.Is it worth an internet war over? Probably only for those who might fancy themselves in the running for such an award. I doubt the vast majority of the reader base cares one way or the other.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 13 April 2015 - 03:42 PM

[Abyss]

It's about ethics in genre lit awards!!!!!

[Gorefest]

Yeah, you know *shrugs*

[QuickTidal]

I think what I drew from the Correia piece (which is only kind of danced around in the GRRM piece) is that the gaming of the awards was done in a way that basically put the farthest right seeming authors into the nomination slots to show JUST how broken the Hugos are and how easily they can be gamed to the extreme (or at least that's what Correia puts forth as Sad Puppies raison d'etre in this). If that truly was their intent...I gotta reluctantly say that they've proved that point in spades. As terrible as the end result is...I mean John C. Wright with six nominations? I tried to read one of his books once...it was not only bad, but terribly sexist.

I mean, I always knew the Hugo's were a popularity contest amongst the who's-who literati (literati?)...and not a true representation of the "best" of SFF by the people who read them as a whole...but the level at which it appears they can be played to represent whomever games them the hardest...is astounding to me as a mere reader.

I guess I always thought that at least at some level they were a fair representation of the golden trophy of SFF to strive for...but it sounds like it's all just a question of campaigning and who knows who.

I'm going to stick to the GoodReads Awards where a couple of thousand random readers vote for the BEST in books...I may end up with something as weak as DIVERGENT winning an award...but at least it was voted on by varied masses of random people and not small insular cliques of people who game the whole thing to win.

EDIT: Gorfest, you make a great point. The Hugo's don't really matter as much anymore (they certainly don't weigh on me...but I like when DOCTOR WHO wins one, I can't help it)...but as far as books, I never pay attention...but it really was this award that I saw in my periphery and thought "Oh right, that's like an Oscar, right?"...which I guess it's not, but that's what I assumed? So that's probably on my naivety.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 13 April 2015 - 06:20 PM

[Gorefest]

There are so many ways to judge a book, in the end it all comes down to personal preference anyway. You can award prizes for most books sold, you can award them for most appreciated by fans, you can award them based on the votes from an expert panel (made up of e.g. authors and/or editors/publishers), but in the end every type of voting will have its own biases and downsides.

[QuickTidal]

And Martin responds to Corriea.

http://grrm.livejour...com/420090.html

The only thing I'll note in GRRM's response is his referring to "geek stereotypes" (guys who play D&D and read comics in the basement and can't get dates ect.) like they are defacto setting for authors of SFF or fans? That's a bit disingenuous and a tad backwards really (Unless it's on BIG BANG THEORY?). Otherwise, the rest of the post responds well I think, and feels more straightforward than the other post Martin made.

But yeah, anyone else getting the heavy insider baseball from this? These two guys are having these long posts to one another, and all I keep thinking is...does it matter to us?

While I initially thought it worth commenting on by us, the reading masses...perhaps it's not and I was mistaken to link to it. Apologies if that's the case.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 13 April 2015 - 04:34 PM

[Andorion]

I dont really see if a book has won a Hugo or not before I pick it up. If we went by awards we would probably not have read quite a few brilliant books. I actually like the Goodreads idea. Let the readers judge for themeselves. I mean we know what happens when a clique starts to define quality for an artform right?

[Gorefest]

OPERA ensues.

[QuickTidal]

I can't believe how widely the media attention has grabbed onto this. Who knew that SFF genre awards were a big enough deal to get this type of coverage.

I'll echo Abercrombie's tweet about the whole thing. "The Hugo Awards have never looked less like the future of anything." Which about sums it all up for how I feel.

[acesn8s]

ibWorldconchangesthenominationrules

[Grief]

QuickTidal, on 13 April 2015 - 06:24 PM, said:

I can't believe how widely the media attention has grabbed onto this. Who knew that SFF genre awards were a big enough deal to get this type of coverage.

I'll echo Abercrombie's tweet about the whole thing. "The Hugo Awards have never looked less like the future of anything." Which about sums it all up for how I feel.

Are there any particularly major/interesting examples -- I've not done a good job keeping up with this thing (wasn't aware it was a thing until this thread).

Martin seems (in his 2nd post) to put a lot of weight on the tradition/history of the Hugo's as what makes it important and prestigious. Is that something that people think is really compatible with a modern mass media society which perhaps increasingly debates the "behind-the-scenes" of awards such as the Oscars? What does the prestige of an award hinge upon anyway?

Also, I've never read any Correia -- I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on his work, if anyone has -- so I looked up his work and discovered he has a series called the "Grimnoir Chronicles". I suppose (hope?) it's meant to be a play on Grimoire, but my first thought was that he'd decided that Grimdark just wasn't quite dark enough.

[amphibian]

Correira is precisely the kind of person who does not understand things like what structural inequality looks like in action, why trigger warnings were developed and will resist efforts to talk about this calmly and accurately for as long as he can. His blog as a whole reflects that ethos again and again.

Look at this one: http://monsterhunter...enge-a-fisking/

He puts up garbage take after garbage take in critiquing a post by KT Bradford about getting beyond the "straight white author" pervasion in literature. He attacks Bradford's very position to challenge herself, charges her with reverse racism, assumes that she is furiously anti-male and anti-Larry Correira in what she is saying and demonizes her as a "SJW".

Look at this one too: http://monsterhunter...sts-on-twitter/

His grasp of history and context is nearly as bad as the buffoons he chooses to argue with on Twitter. There are several discussions here on this very board that dig into pieces of history and present day realities that he inaccurately and disingenuously sums up to push his perspective on life. When he said "Democrats" were THE barrier to fixing the problems left behind by slavery and slavery's formal abolition, that is so incomplete and wrong of an answer as to leave me breathless. This guy does not understand and he won't do anything to challenge his (very wrong) viewpoints on these subjects. Some of them are even easy things to do. He won't read Ta-Nehisi Coates's articles on redlining and systemic inequality, he probably will not consume any media or histories that get into the meat of "why" things happened the way they did in American history regarding slavery, black people and so on. He probably won't admit that the political groups behind the Southern Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s largely morphed into the Republicans of today, probably has garbage fire takes on policing and so on. Arguing badly with people on Twitter is about as far as he's going to take this.

His rambling "About Me" shows a history of struggle to make it out of some deep poverty and rough situations. It also shows a very, very selective viewpoint that actually goes as far as to discount the existence of racism in the American South (particularly Alabama) among other things that start to aggregate into a passage loaded with keywords and phrases that have a cumulative effect of being dogwhistle language. His stated political viewpoints are pretty bad. Bad enough to make me not want to read his work. So, he might be right in a roundabout way saying that his politics are one reason behind his exclusion.

Sure, the Sad Puppies thing sounds like a decent idea to break up a very small "club" of voters. But it isn't being just that one thing. The people have banded together to become bullies, to purposefully attack and minimize others, to slowly devalue the nature of social and institutional criticism and more. Sad Puppies has mutated beyond the original purposes the group had and the people leading it are trash in so many ways.

I have not read his books, but Larry Correira is an unrepentant holder of garbage dump fire level attitudes about things and that will keep me from paying money to his publishers and reading his books. He claims he isn't a racist or a sexist, but he shows strong patterns of flinging huge percentages of his criticisms at women, flings them at people of color and flings them heaviest at those who are both because they in particular are who sets him off, rather than what they say.

The Hugos have structural problems in the judging, as does publishing/media content production in general. GRRM admits their existence, talks about progress in empowering women, minorities and the development of a true meritocratic awards panel over recent years and GRRM shows us the opening of the voting to those who pay $40 and nominate things is part of a process designed to address the problems.

The problem with GoodReads awards is that yes, thousands of people will vote for Divergent being amazing. But that doesn't mean it's qualitatively better than other books that more selective and experienced people will read. For awards to really matter to me, I think that there has to be a judges' panel and those judges have to be well read, experienced and trusted with recognizing quality in disparate forms. I lean more towards the Hugos (although I don't actually follow Hugo nominations for ToReadPile additions) than I do quickly crowd-sourced awards.

Too Long. Didn't Read summary: Larry Correira spews out garbage takes constantly due to awful grasps of history/personal politics/joy found in disrespecting other people. Discount him and those who've taken up the Sad Puppy cause.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 13 April 2015 - 08:35 PM

[The Unfound]

Grief, on 13 April 2015 - 07:56 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 13 April 2015 - 06:24 PM, said:

I can't believe how widely the media attention has grabbed onto this. Who knew that SFF genre awards were a big enough deal to get this type of coverage.

I'll echo Abercrombie's tweet about the whole thing. "The Hugo Awards have never looked less like the future of anything." Which about sums it all up for how I feel.

Are there any particularly major/interesting examples -- I've not done a good job keeping up with this thing (wasn't aware it was a thing until this thread).

Martin seems (in his 2nd post) to put a lot of weight on the tradition/history of the Hugo's as what makes it important and prestigious. Is that something that people think is really compatible with a modern mass media society which perhaps increasingly debates the "behind-the-scenes" of awards such as the Oscars? What does the prestige of an award hinge upon anyway?

Also, I've never read any Correia -- I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on his work, if anyone has -- so I looked up his work and discovered he has a series called the "Grimnoir Chronicles". I suppose (hope?) it's meant to be a play on Grimoire, but my first thought was that he'd decided that Grimdark just wasn't quite dark enough.

Ive read both his Grimnoire Chronicles and The Monster Hunter Series and I happen to be a big fan of both. They move quickly and have alot of great action. They are great for a quick enteratining read but if you are looking for something with deeper meaning and higher end prose best look elsewhere.

[EmperorMagus]

Grief, on 13 April 2015 - 07:56 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 13 April 2015 - 06:24 PM, said:

I can't believe how widely the media attention has grabbed onto this. Who knew that SFF genre awards were a big enough deal to get this type of coverage.

I'll echo Abercrombie's tweet about the whole thing. "The Hugo Awards have never looked less like the future of anything." Which about sums it all up for how I feel.

Are there any particularly major/interesting examples -- I've not done a good job keeping up with this thing (wasn't aware it was a thing until this thread).

Martin seems (in his 2nd post) to put a lot of weight on the tradition/history of the Hugo's as what makes it important and prestigious. Is that something that people think is really compatible with a modern mass media society which perhaps increasingly debates the "behind-the-scenes" of awards such as the Oscars? What does the prestige of an award hinge upon anyway?

Also, I've never read any Correia -- I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on his work, if anyone has -- so I looked up his work and discovered he has a series called the "Grimnoir Chronicles". I suppose (hope?) it's meant to be a play on Grimoire, but my first thought was that he'd decided that Grimdark just wasn't quite dark enough.

I have read his first three Monster Hunter International books. They consisted of pretty standard government hating alongside a lot of gun descriptions. The only reason I read all three was having all three. From what I read he really wasn't a great writer. Decent is the best word to describe him.

This whole debate is ridiculous though, on both sides. Martin sounds like some conservative talking against gay marriage using phrases like "Proud Traditions" and "Rich History". The Sad Puppies seem like Politicians using the system to get themselves elected. Meanwhile, no one cares about the awards themselves. (at least i don't know anyone who does)

Although I have to admit that the claim that the books should be considered free of their ideological messages is plain stupid. Literature is a method of conveying ideas, what point is there in ignoring the ideas conveyed in giving awards?

[worry]

While GRRM has a very long-in-the-subculture/industry take on it that can't help but be really personal (he pretty deliberately avoids drawing lines to GamerGate etc. because they're outside his spheres of experience/interest), I do appreciate him recently throwing his weight behind the excision of Vox Day and his ilk. As far as takes on the issue though, I like NK Jemisin's: http://nkjemisin.com...y-youre-making/

[amphibian]

The question of how books should be considered in terms of ideological attitudes/statements of their creators is a tough one. There's no clear place to draw the line and say "Take into account thiiiiis much and then focus just on the book's merits." for any reasonable segment of literature.

We, as readers and occasional producers of content, shouldn't read/watch/consume only that produced by those who agree with us wholly. That'd be terrible. But there are people that do things or say things that are bad enough singly or in a cumulative bunch that should off-put people within the audience.

Context matters. It always does, but it matters particularly in things we read because authors tend to put a big chunk of themselves into what's on the page. Yes, distortion and creative additions occur, but often what's on the page can link to things in that author's life that add layers and meaning to a knowledgeable reader's experience.

Without context, someone could read David Brooks's last two months of NYT columns and think "Oh this guy is kinda getting preachy about right ways of living and so on." With context, that reader could realize that Brooks is constantly taking shots at his ex, who he is divorcing, and reinforcing his decision to marry another younger woman straightaway. The context turns something kinda ignorable into "Whuuuuut? Stop doing that, you jerk." territory.

(See Jeet Heer and his tweets on David Brooks for further explanations on this weird break-up drama.)

So Correira and the others proudly fly the flag for the groups they identify with. That's fine. But they get mad when people respond negatively to those particular groups because of the exclusion and otherization that the groups perpetuate or pay homage to and that's kinda dumb and wrong. It's also a phenomenon the white American male exhibits fairly often.

[Una]

Oh my God!

2 thoughts:

1. That is the most articulate piece of writing I have seen from GRRM in a long time. I did not find it as rambley as his novels.
2. Holy cow! This Correia guy is real piece of work! I mean, I'm sure writer's circles are as cliquey as anything, but about 1/3 of the way into that post, he goes into full nutjob mode. He's like the guy who got rejected by the Homecoming Queen and now wants to shoot up the whole school. Because it's society's fault that he creeps everyone out and no one wants to be his friend. Well, that does it, I don't think I want to read anything else he's written. I think I've seen enough. Seriously. The second half reads like a manifesto some "disturbed" guy would write just before buying a gun and opening fire at a random public institution. I am genuinely creeped out.