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Merged 2014 Hugo awards.

fuelair said:
Because the Hugo's are important. Their **** would be worthless.
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But if your award is fairer and fixes all the perceived flaws in the Hugo's system it would not take long for your award to eclipse it in the grand scheme of things. That is if you believe you have a real point and not stirring the pot for the hell of it.

Oh and for anyone who cares. The 1000th issue of Analog is hitting the streets soon
 
MG1962 said:
But if your award is fairer and fixes all the perceived flaws in the Hugo's system it would not take long for your award to eclipse it in the grand scheme of things. That is if you believe you have a real point and not stirring the pot for the hell of it.

Oh and for anyone who cares. The 1000th issue of Analog is hitting the streets soon
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Which might matter except that their's is not.
 
fuelair said:
Which might matter except that their's is not.
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Which is why I used the word perceived. While the Hugo's can be a bit long winded in the nomination and final voting. The award sets itself up as nothing more than a popularity contest, and definitely delivers

Science Fiction fans dont seem all that taken by whims, and virtually every author to win the award for a novel has a pretty solid body of work behind them.

The Hugo's also challenge the notion of what is good science fiction. The sheer number of themes, styles and attitudes that have won over the year has been pretty breath taking.
 
I enjoy military Science Fiction, but find the whole idea of a talentless hack writer like Tom Kratman getting a Hugo Nomination to be ludricious.

And it's pretty clear that the Sad Puppies whole argument about literary style is a thin covering:It's all about the politics.

Irony is they worship Robert Heinlein,but Heinlein would be the first to laugh at their antics.Heinlein is a much more complex individual then the hard core ideologues on both sides of the spectrum care to admit.
I actually have a lot of sympathy for one of the Puppies point: People who are into Sci Fi SHOULD read the classics, they should read Asimov,Heinlein, Clark, and the rest of the Golden Age masters;but when the Puppies resort to stupid tactics like this they really shoot themselves in the foot.
Can't wait to see what Harlan Ellison...who fought this whole battle back in the late 60/s when the traditionalist were outraged over "Dangerous Visions"..has to say about this.
 
MG1962 said:
Which is why I used the word perceived. While the Hugo's can be a bit long winded in the nomination and final voting. The award sets itself up as nothing more than a popularity contest, and definitely delivers

Science Fiction fans dont seem all that taken by whims, and virtually every author to win the award for a novel has a pretty solid body of work behind them.

The Hugo's also challenge the notion of what is good science fiction. The sheer number of themes, styles and attitudes that have won over the year has been pretty breath taking.
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And we have seen this whole battle before. Read about the flap that occurred when stories from Harlan Ellison's "Dangerous Visions" anthlogy dominated the Hugos back in 1968.
 
dudalb said:
I enjoy military Science Fiction, but find the whole idea of a talentless hack writer like Tom Kratman getting a Hugo Nomination to be ludricious.

And it's pretty clear that the Sad Puppies whole argument about literary style is a thin covering:It's all about the politics.

Irony is they worship Robert Heinlein,but Heinlein would be the first to laugh at their antics.Heinlein is a much more complex individual then the hard core ideologues on both sides of the spectrum care to admit.
I actually have a lot of sympathy for one of the Puppies point: People who are into Sci Fi SHOULD read the classics, they should read Asimov,Heinlein, Clark, and the rest of the Golden Age masters;but when the Puppies resort to stupid tactics like this they really shoot themselves in the foot.
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I'm generally considered a rampaging SJW and I love the old stuff.

Can't wait to see what Harlan Ellison...who fought this whole battle back in the late 60/s when the traditionalist were outraged over "Dangerous Visions"..has to say about this.
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I suspect whatever he says will have to be heavily edited to be quoted here...
 
dudalb said:
I enjoy military Science Fiction, but find the whole idea of a talentless hack writer like Tom Kratman getting a Hugo Nomination to be ludricious.
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Absolutely. To describe Kratman as a fifth rate writer is being charitable. Personally he's also a deeply unpleasant person, misogynistic, racist, homophobic and transphobic. Not to forget given to threats of violence against anyone who corrects his errors or other wises challenges him.

His nominated story is utter crap; originally a lump of Bolo fan-fic unter the copyright holder refused to allow them he used. It includes a number of people who've argued with him on the internet as strawmen.

Not that Wright and VD are much better, either as writers or people.

dudalb said:
And it's pretty clear that the Sad Puppies whole argument about literary style is a thin covering:It's all about the politics.
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Oh yes.

dudalb said:
Irony is they worship Robert Heinlein,but Heinlein would be the first to laugh at their antics.Heinlein is a much more complex individual then the hard core ideologues on both sides of the spectrum care to admit.
I actually have a lot of sympathy for one of the Puppies point: People who are into Sci Fi SHOULD read the classics, they should read Asimov,Heinlein, Clark, and the rest of the Golden Age masters;but when the Puppies resort to stupid tactics like this they really shoot themselves in the foot.
Can't wait to see what Harlan Ellison...who fought this whole battle back in the late 60/s when the traditionalist were outraged over "Dangerous Visions"..has to say about this.
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Meh, personally I don't hold Ellison in high regard. Just a prone to silly ranting as some of the puppy-boys.
 
Irony is they worship Robert Heinlein,but Heinlein would be the first to laugh at their antics.Heinlein is a much more complex individual then the hard core ideologues on both sides of the spectrum care to admit.
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Irony is that in their push to get their favorite writers on the ballot the Puppies pushed the second volume of Patterson's Heinlein biography out of the Best Related Work category.

I used to be a fairly regular WorldCon attendee and Hugo voter, and am still on the periphery of that crowd. Mr. Retrograde was a Hugo voter last year, so we got the packet that included some of last year's Puppy nominations. I don't expect the voters' tastes to match mine - there are a lot of winners I thought were substandard (Harry Potter over Perdido Street Station in 2001? Really?) but mostly I can understand the reasoning behind the votes.

The reasoning behind the Puppy slates, especially in the novel category, which I'm most familiar with, seems to be fear of the new. The five novels on the Sad Puppies slate are all parts of series, or sequels; I don't know about Chaplin's War on the Rabid Puppy slate, but the rest are sequels/series. For a group that claim to admire classic science fiction they seem to have overlooked one of its aspects, the experience of the new. (They also overlooked Ancillary Sword, which is straight-out old-fashioned military SF - it's got a Galactic Empire forgoshsakes. But then it probably has girl cooties).
 
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dudalb said:
Irony is they worship Robert Heinlein,but Heinlein would be the first to laugh at their antics.Heinlein is a much more complex individual then the hard core ideologues on both sides of the spectrum care to admit.
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Heinlein was definitely one of the most Right Wing Communists I have ever encountered. It is always so much fun to watch whenever a Starship Trooper debate breaks out :)
 
MG1962 said:
What is an SJW, raging or otherwise?
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"Social Justice Warrior", or a person who fights for social justice. Except that the people who use it seriously usually mean it in a negative way by taking the idea to the extreme (e.g. not only might one be in favour of more gay rights, they would outright despise straight people).

Here's an example of such usage on this very forum, though it might not make much sense without context.

I did have a quick look for a better description but... the main places I found were a little biased. The Wikipedia description is short but okay. Here's an alternate view from the opposite perspective to mine (background on the author).
 
uvar said:
"Social Justice Warrior", or a person who fights for social justice. Except that the people who use it seriously usually mean it in a negative way by taking the idea to the extreme (e.g. not only might one be in favour of more gay rights, they would outright despise straight people).
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Like "Darwinist" it's usually a good sign that the person using it is a little out of touch with reality.
 
Brainster said:
I wasn't dismissing it by any means. I love genre writing and prefer it greatly to literary writing which bores me to tears. That is not to say that some genre writing can't have solid literary chops--see Raymond Chandler's take on the hard-boiled detective genre.

But good and great SF requires plot and characterization.
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I guess that you don't count Asimov as great then.

:duck:
 
Sigh. It's been a while since I voted for the Hugos -- I'm always behind on reading the mags, I don't read as broadly as the ballots usually are, and I don't watch movies/TV much any more. Mostly I would vote so that I could vote against Gardner Dozois, whose story choices drove me away from IASFM.

What am I going to do this year? Not vote, or vote "no award"? Dunno. I suppose that given the above, I shouldn't vote.

Probably for the first time I will not attend the award ceremony. I don't think that it will be pretty, no matter what happens.

Are the Hugos that relevant any more? What percentage of the WorldCon attendees & supporters actually nominate or vote? How have the numbers changed over time? The short winners haven't been collected into anthologies since 1994.

Fred
 
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