[Una]

Oh yeah. And only white guys get to be "disturbed". The rest of us get called "psycho", "deranged", or "dangerous" when we go around writing stuff like that. So there's that angle too. Yikes!

[amphibian]

Una, on 14 April 2015 - 03:21 AM, said:

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.

I thought about making some high school clique analogies, but I had qualms about doing this because high school situations aren't applicable to this.

To some degree, these are people's careers we are talking about. GRRM mentions how some of the early attention he got from the Hugos crowd helped stabilize his writing career.

The way awards are judged and works nominated really does matter to the authors on the outside looking in. That's possibly the difference between paying all the bills and having to pick which one to pay.

So there is a seriousness to what Correira and the others are talking about - but the Sad Puppies are more concerned about signalling to each other that they are the righteous group doing the righteous thing than actually doing what they purportedly came for. The overuse of "SJW", the constant mentions of anti-government things, guns and so on aren't there to talk to people who aren't already believers.

And... it's somewhat understandable because the response they get from people who don't believe what they believe is usually dismissal, scorn and so on. People act on how they feel - it's not "just what women do" - and when people run into a group (or more than one group) that doesn't dismiss/shun/attack them, they often start molding themselves along those lines. For Correira, membership of the right wing/anti-government/weird self-reliance/guns crowd is more important than being part of the writerly crowd. It's probably a better deal for him in terms of moving units of his books too.

That's why he declined the nomination and that's why it's the right move for him, even if it blows any outsider's rough logical framework for his/Sad Puppies' arguments to confused smithereens.

This is a minorly fucked up situation, ongoing at the wish of many angry white American dudes over the wishes of others, and somehow it's just a multi-year blip in a situation not entirely of the Hugo Awards team's making that's been fucked up in a worse way for longer.

I actually don't think Saladin Ahmed is the bee's knees in the technical sense as a writer, but I bought his book and read his very entertaining Twitter all the time. Him winning awards is GOOD for the industry as a whole and he's a skilled enough writer that it works. What he is saying, the timing of it and the methods of it are indeed award-worthy. There are several authors in similar situations - many of them women and women who aren't white - and Correira wants to crap all over them in a situation that's like a politer version of RequiresOnlyHate/Benjanun Sridankaeuw.

What Correira and the other authors with him are doing is less about the ethics and more about poisoning the well for other fledgling authors and social signaling to those who will actually buy their books. That's not ok.

[Una]

amphibian, on 14 April 2015 - 04:39 AM, said:

I thought about making some high school clique analogies, but I had qualms about doing this because high school situations aren't applicable to this.

Except that right about the point in the post where Correia talk s about "cool kids" and "mean girls" is the point at which he starts going off the rails. Something's eating the guy deep down, it's not really a love for his craft and a desire to improve the system such that the best and brightest are appropriately recognized and the genre grows as a whole. The guy needs help or he's going to go through the rest of his life all sad and angry, wondering why he can never catch a break, failing to realize that most sane people don't actually want to waste their time and energy giving a break to someone who is so very unpleasant and quite obviously mental.


And I agree with pretty much everything you said.

[stone monkey]

tbh I'm with Amph and Una on this (puts his feminist hat on, although arguably I never take it off):

I find Correia's nonsense to be entirely about how he longs for the good old days when it was the white, straight, cis, middle class, American (and occasionally British) males who were the only ones allowed to play with sf toys. Those Other People have now picked up the toys and are playing with them in ways that he couldn't (and, most importantly, doesn't even want to) imagine. And sf, as a genre, is all the more better for it. I think he's sad because, while he can still play with the toys, it's no fun for him if those Other People are allowed to play with them too; and they should all just shut up and disappear off to where he isn't forced to look at them.

Gaming the system is a front. It's been done before and, in fact, it's always being done to a certain extent, as individual authors try to get their own followings out for the vote. Correia and his ilk are simply reactionaries. If he was truly concerned about getting the Hugos back to "the good old days" he'd be looking at the great strides sf made in the 60s and 70s, with the first wave of feminist sf and the expansion of the range of subjects being tackled within sf narratives, and how we build on that legacy.

The legacy is the thing imo. The Hugos (and other awards as well) are kind of useless as guides for what you should read this year. I'd argue that most people don't use the most recent set of nominations as any kind of prescriptive list of What You Should Read, they're more What I May Read If I Run Out Of Stuff I Like. What they actually are is for the future, I think. I don't know about anyone else here, but when I was just getting into the genre seriously, as a teenager back in the early 80s, I used the Hugos, Nebulas and whatnot as a way to see where the genre had been. To familiarise myself with the tropes. To try and understand the history of what I was getting myself into... Admittedly, I may have been a little weird as a teenager (and more so now, before anyone is tempted to add it ).

This may be just my incoherent noodling, but I think Correia et al are trying to control the future narrative of sf. To say to the future "This is what sf was about in the early 21st century". To control the future of sf by controlling its past (which, almost by the magic of the timey wimey ball, is now our present). It won't work, of course; sf, almost by definition, is trying to get away from its past.

Correiai's plaintive (and pathetic) paean for the good old days is, to an extent, lazy. He wants sf to be only be what he (and his followers) want it to be, which is dangerous because that's a recipe for the genre's stultification and eventual death. Time and sf move on; there's nothing too terribly wrong about enjoying all that ray guns and manly men stuff, if that's what floats your boat, but sf is and must be about more than that. Ironically for someone who claims to write sf, his imagination is lacking.

/end rant

You know? I feel much better for having gotten that out of my system.

Oh yes... And while I'm ranting,... Why does the thread title have a Grocer's Apostrophe?

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 14 April 2015 - 11:10 PM

[Stormcat]

Ah this was already a topic, I shall remove mine.

[worry]

On not presenting:
http://azsf.net/cwblog/?p=116

[QuickTidal]

Hah! I love Connie Willis! That was a great post, especially the last paragraph. Thanks for sharing Worry.

[acesn8s]

I have at least 3 authors that will not make it to my TBR queue.

[QuickTidal]

stone monkey, on 14 April 2015 - 10:46 PM, said:

This may be just my incoherent noodling, but I think Correia et al are trying to control the future narrative of sf. To say to the future "This is what sf was about in the early 21st century". To control the future of sf by controlling its past (which, almost by the magic of the timey wimey ball, is now our present). It won't work, of course; sf, almost by definition, is trying to get away from its past.

Correiai's plaintive (and pathetic) paean for the good old days is, to an extent, lazy. He wants sf to be only be what he (and his followers) want it to be, which is dangerous because that's a recipe for the genre's stultification and eventual death. Time and sf move on; there's nothing too terribly wrong about enjoying all that ray guns and manly men stuff, if that's what floats your boat, but sf is and must be about more than that. Ironically for someone who claims to write sf, his imagination is lacking.

I don't think he, or the other conservative authors in the Sad Puppies have even remotely enough clout to do any such thing. There are far too many people put off by their ideals or their fiction for them to control anything in the grand scope of SFF. Strangely (and perhaps delusionally) I think Correia really believes he's doing something to expose the broken system and that will somehow lead to a better awards set. It's certainly not going to do that...but I think inside his head he believes it will.

stone monkey, on 14 April 2015 - 10:46 PM, said:

Oh yes... And while I'm ranting,... Why does the thread title have a Grocer's Apostrophe?

You know what? I think my brain just mentally skipped over that and posted it incorrectly and what's worse I didn't even notice it till you pointed it out. DOH! Apologies. Rectified now.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 15 April 2015 - 01:49 PM

[worry]

I've never heard the term Grocer's Apostrophe before and I love it. Are they called Grocer's Quotes when the sign says "Fresh" Fish On Sale?

[Grief]

Read the other Correia blog posts Amph linked and yeeeesh.

EmperorMagus, on 13 April 2015 - 08:55 PM, said:

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?

amphibian, on 14 April 2015 - 02:17 AM, said:

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.

I think this is a worthwhile point. I can't say I intend to read Correia's books, because I've got a huge TRP and they don't sound worth making space for particularly, and since I've not read them, I'm going to use a situation that seems vaguely analogous for the purposes of the discussion: Orson Scott Card. It's been years since I read it, but I remember thinking that Ender's Game was a great book. I was pretty appalled when I found out about Card's views some time after I read it. If it was up for a Hugo now, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it. On one hand, I don't like his views and the idea of ignoring his views and him winning seems unpalatable, on the other, I would say that the book is good enough to win (I'm ignoring that it already has, of course). From what I recall, the book doesn't especially push his views (I may be wrong here, it's been ages), which makes a difference. Since I haven't read Correia, I can't really comment on how far his ideology makes it into his work (though from people comments it seems it does to a point where it's noticeable, at least).

stone monkey, on 14 April 2015 - 10:46 PM, said:

I find Correia's nonsense to be entirely about how he longs for the good old days when it was the white, straight, cis, middle class, American (and occasionally British) males who were the only ones allowed to play with sf toys. Those Other People have now picked up the toys and are playing with them in ways that he couldn't (and, most importantly, doesn't even want to) imagine.

As a side note, I'd be interested in recommendations for books that -- to continue your metaphor -- use the toys in a way that is itself non-white, non-cis, etc.

[amphibian]

Grief, on 15 April 2015 - 11:53 PM, said:

As a side note, I'd be interested in recommendations for books that -- to continue your metaphor -- use the toys in a way that is itself non-white, non-cis, etc.

That's an interesting, yet small sub-genre to set up, as many authors do have main characters that are non-white or non-cis or write in a SF setting, but not all at the same time:

Ursula LeGuin and Octavia Butlers are the titans in that sub-genre. From the 60s onwards, they've written many books that fit into those loose criteria.

Ancillary Justice has a not-quite-human protagonist that uses default language that makes everyone a "she" and does a few other unusual things as well. (The book is by Ann Leckie).

Iain Banks pushed everything around in his Culture books, but he didn't make sexuality a strong component of his books. I think he was less interested in sex and sexuality than he was in the relationships people had with each other and with things. Plus the mutability and longevity of the Culture people made it a more or less "sapiosexual" thing - which is a bit different from what average human sexuality probably is.

Richard Morgan's recently finished Land Fit for Heroes has some sci-fi, two non-white main characters and a very, very gay main character.

There's many more books out there that are two of the three (which is encouraging!), but a comprehensive list of books with all three together is a bit difficult for me to write at 1 am with a slight bit of insomnia.

Hope others can contribute to that list.

[Grief]

amphibian, on 16 April 2015 - 05:00 AM, said:

Grief, on 15 April 2015 - 11:53 PM, said:

As a side note, I'd be interested in recommendations for books that -- to continue your metaphor -- use the toys in a way that is itself non-white, non-cis, etc.

That's an interesting, yet small sub-genre to set up, as many authors do have main characters that are non-white or non-cis or write in a SF setting, but not all at the same time:

Ursula LeGuin and Octavia Butlers are the titans in that sub-genre. From the 60s onwards, they've written many books that fit into those loose criteria.

Ancillary Justice has a not-quite-human protagonist that uses default language that makes everyone a "she" and does a few other unusual things as well. (The book is by Ann Leckie).

Iain Banks pushed everything around in his Culture books, but he didn't make sexuality a strong component of his books. I think he was less interested in sex and sexuality than he was in the relationships people had with each other and with things. Plus the mutability and longevity of the Culture people made it a more or less "sapiosexual" thing - which is a bit different from what average human sexuality probably is.

Richard Morgan's recently finished Land Fit for Heroes has some sci-fi, two non-white main characters and a very, very gay main character.

There's many more books out there that are two of the three (which is encouraging!), but a comprehensive list of books with all three together is a bit difficult for me to write at 1 am with a slight bit of insomnia.

Hope others can contribute to that list.

I wasn't necessarily meaning people who did it "all at once" (and indeed, we could easily add "non-English language" to that list, in which case, I wouldn't be able to read them anyhow), simply those who did at least one aspect, so your recommendations are helpful.

LeGuin was the one that immediately came to mind. I've not read any Butler, so if anyone has specific recommendations there, that'd be neat. Otherwise I guess I could just go with the ones that won the Hugo .

I would generally agree with your assessment of Banks. In The Player of Games (I think) it seemed like he was trying to engage with gender issues more than some of his other books, though I don't remember thinking he did that much with it. At the same time, the fact he doesn't make much of a big deal of it at times makes a valuable point in itself (for example, I seem to remember that there are books where characters maintain relationships even though they change sex from time to time, and this is done rather casually without much really being made of it).

I read The Steel Remains probably quite soon after it was released and the board was hyping it up a lot. I seem to remember enjoying it, but didn't buy the next one when it came out. I might pick the others when I've got more time though, and re-read the first since I can't remember it very well. I seem to remember various people also saying that Altered Carbon was better.

I've seen Ancilliary Justice crop up a few times here, to generally decent response, though not to huge acclaim, so I may pick it up at some point.

[Andorion]

If we are talking about powerful female roles, then Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space and Puching Ice are good examples

[amphibian]

I just found out about the James Tiptree Jr Award - which chooses among science fiction books that specifically work with gender concepts.

http://en.wikipedia....._Award_winners

That's probably a great way to find sci fi books that use non-white and non-cis characters. I haven't read too many in that nominations list, but the few that I have were VERY good. Not every book nominated or winning the award is going to fit the parameters set above (I know we're not being insistent upon them, but it's an interesting exercise)

I also have more to post about the Sad/Rabid Puppies, particularly thru the lens of Jeet Heer and Nathaniel Givens.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 17 April 2015 - 04:08 PM

[stone monkey]

There is, of course, the Prometheus Award for libertarian sf that might be more up the Sad Puppies street. Although as that's been won by such people as Cory Doctorow and Ken MacLeod, in the past, I suspect they see that one as tainted too

[worry]

http://www.wired.com...awards-matters/

[Morgoth]

worry, on 24 August 2015 - 03:28 AM, said:

http://www.wired.com...awards-matters/

When you post a link to an article, it would be polite I think to also add a quote, or a summary to show what the article is actually about.

[worry]

Yah maybe. Who am I to judge?

[Maark Abbott]

worry, on 24 August 2015 - 09:32 AM, said:

Yah maybe. Who am I to judge?

I wouldn't worry about it.

...

I hope my words don't cause an existential crisis.