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Merged 2014 Hugo awards.

asydhouse said:
Fair enough.

I wonder if the reason Jimbob was put off was because he came to the book with no prior expectations, and was disturbed by what he found, whereas I went in with trepidation, and found it to be different from what I had feared?

Whatever, it's definitely a work of art, not trash. And not "entertainment". Art can be disturbing, challenging etc, which can be tricky.

Too tricky for rabid puppies, at any rate, I'm sure! Haha! They couldn't cope with Ursula le Guin, let alone a surrealist poet like Ballard!

(Desperate attempt to get back on topic!) :D
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I'm not sure. I do remember it as being pretty intense and not that enjoyable read. It was in the college paperback library at university, and I was working through their collection of cult authors - sometime between The Wasp Factory (which I did enjoy) and The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (I can't recall much about that except the cover art). I remember that I found it significantly grimmer than The Wasp Factory. My enjoyment limits are still probably somewhere between the two.
 
jimbob said:
I'm not sure. I do remember it as being pretty intense and not that enjoyable read. It was in the college paperback library at university, and I was working through their collection of cult authors - sometime between The Wasp Factory (which I did enjoy) and The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (I can't recall much about that except the cover art). I remember that I found it significantly grimmer than The Wasp Factory. My enjoyment limits are still probably somewhere between the two.
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So maybe the combination of being extremely dense prose poetry and unpleasant subject material made it too unattractive to continue, rather than the sort of matter-of-fact murdering that put me off the very old-fashioned space story I was referring to, which brought up in me a moral revulsion for the author's dehumanisation of Chinese astronauts, that I was referring to.

I once picked up a paperback by a self-published author which was nothing but sadistic fantasising, and with no literary force or style at all, which I gave up on within a half-dozen pages (possibly the only time I've quit on a book). That made me feel disgust. I never had that sensation while reading Ballard.

I have found him heavy going at times, simply because of the density and surreality of some of his prose, but that's a different matter.

Anyway, Iain M. Banks was always way more fun! I'd love to live in The Culture! And The Wasp Factory was a very enjoyable read, indeed.

I imagine rabid puppies were nonplussed by Iain's exuberant anarchic "space opera" stories about The Culture. They want sf to be fun? And they don't think Iain was sharing big fun with all us lucky fans? That says it all! :p:thumbsup:
 
catsmate said:
Poxy's latest fiasco/rant is the deletion of his Goodreads account, and the Rapid Puppies group (dedicated to smearing opponents and "SJWs"), over their pathetic attempts to manipulate book ratings on the site.
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And now the puppboys and their supporters are suggesting a conspiracy because Scalzi went to the same high school as the CEO of Goodreads (though ten years apart).
:rolleyes:
 
catsmate said:
And now the puppboys and their supporters are suggesting a conspiracy because Scalzi went to the same high school as the CEO of Goodreads (though ten years apart).
:rolleyes:
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If that's the quality of plot the puppies can come up with, their fiction must be literally full of holes!
 
catsmate said:
You could sample some of Tom 'The Ammonia King' Kratman's freebies if you're feeling masochistic.
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Well I followed the link, but his only fiction were two novels, and I'm not up for getting into them. The other stuff is all nonfiction. I saw Benford has a two part essay called 'Terraforming Ganymede with Robert Heinlein" which I would have liked to read, but you have to download a whole book to get them, and when I tried to do that it says you have to have previously bought the book or something… anyway, I am not keen to get sucked into complicated ordering to download, not sure if they are going to try charging in the end, so I've lost interest.

I'm very suspicious of "free" things that are complicated in the getting.
 
asydhouse said:
Wait, so you read a review and never actually read any of the book? (No, sorry, you saw Ballard quoting a review!)

I read the annotated edition of Crash, which came out in the 80s or so, and it was not a perverted or mentally ill gross out at all. It was intense, as he wrote it after his wife died in a car crash, and it was densely Ballardian surrealist poetic psychological extremity, but not pornographic or grovelling decadence.

It was a science fictionally "New Wave" consideration of extreme reactions to modernity, or something like that. I'm writing all this on my remaining impressions decades later after reading it, so it's all simply an attempt to describe my experience of reading it, rather than a description of the text per se, I guess, but even though I'm easily grossed out by revolting sadistic pornography, which I avoid, and other violence etc, I did not have any of those reactions while reading it. I remember having some trepidation before reading it, and if it was simply some kind of gross porn I wouldn't have continued with it, but I remember it as an intensely poetic and interesting experience, which I found not at all disgusting or perverted or whatever.

I'm not saying you should read it, as it is not a light read, but it's not what you seem to be thinking it is.

Just sayin'.
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Not to mention that there was in the 80s into the 90s a distinct Japanese porn (not explicitly sexual though) of younger (late teens/20s)females in hospital beds heavily bandaged. Do not know if part of Crash came from that, but the two co-existed!!!
 
asydhouse said:
Well I followed the link, but his only fiction were two novels, and I'm not up for getting into them. The other stuff is all nonfiction. I saw Benford has a two part essay called 'Terraforming Ganymede with Robert Heinlein" which I would have liked to read, but you have to download a whole book to get them, and when I tried to do that it says you have to have previously bought the book or something… anyway, I am not keen to get sucked into complicated ordering to download, not sure if they are going to try charging in the end, so I've lost interest.

I'm very suspicious of "free" things that are complicated in the getting.
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Ugh, sorry. Baen have changed how the free library works.
 
fuelair said:
Not to mention that there was in the 80s into the 90s a distinct Japanese porn (not explicitly sexual though) of younger (late teens/20s)females in hospital beds heavily bandaged. Do not know if part of Crash came from that, but the two co-existed!!!
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It's still around.
 
fuelair said:
Not to mention that there was in the 80s into the 90s a distinct Japanese porn (not explicitly sexual though) of younger (late teens/20s)females in hospital beds heavily bandaged. Do not know if part of Crash came from that, but the two co-existed!!!
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It's still a popular fetish, and is often combined with cosplay or "lolita" fashion.
 
Aha! And thanks, my primary info source for such vanished many years ago..........
aha!!! They didn't!! Bud Plant's Art Books
 
In what is likely to be a (low) standard for the new RP, slate Poxy's sidekick Wright (the ultra-con catholic, homophobe, child sex abuse apologist and bigot) is on typical form
John C. Wright said:
[T]he Thought Police of SocJus. Morlocks laugh their barbaric, harsh, ungainly laughter at facts. Appeals to justice and fairness they greet with dull, slow stares of open-mouthed incomprehension … They will never cease to abuse, demean, and insult us, and desecrate everything we love, and to slander and libel us with mouth-frothingly stupid and freakishly counterproductive lies … So, you had your chance with the Sad Puppies, Oh hypocrites, sons of vipers, Social-justice propagandists, socialists, christophobes, Morlocks and morons.
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Torgersen isn't much better:
Brad Torgersen said:
All is fair in love and war, and for the block-bombers and CHORFholers, this was absolutely a war. Before, it was a cold war — when they could treat the not-quite-good-enough-fans like ****, and nobody said or did much about it. Sad Puppies became an exercise in second-class citizenry demanding full participation and recognition, which caused the block-bombers — and the CHORFs, with their crybully accomplices — to launch not just a wide media slander campaign, but a deliberate destruction of the Hugos proper; in direct violation of their own stated principles.
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So apparently the Rabid Puppies released their list, which is mostly Vox Day auto-fellation. The Sad Puppies also releaed a list and it apparently was a bit more thoughtful than Vox's 'Ray Gunz & ME!' approach. But still authors on the list are not happy.
 
kookbreaker said:
So apparently the Rabid Puppies released their list, which is mostly Vox Day auto-fellation. The Sad Puppies also releaed a list and it apparently was a bit more thoughtful than Vox's 'Ray Gunz & ME!' approach. But still authors on the list are not happy.
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I came across the list, and was surprised to see Neal Stephenson's Seveneves among the selections for "Best Novel." This was a bit of a shock, especially since Poxy had some rather nasty things to say about it last year (which I had commented about previously):

“I started reading Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, Seveneves, and it is truly depressing. Less because nearly everyone on Earth dies than because he appears to have gone full SJW [Social Justice Warrior] with a Gamma [male] sauce. It’s the first time I’ve found it necessary to force myself to keep reading one of his books, and the first time one of his books has struck me as being proper Pink SF. Female presidents, token ethnic melanges, you name it, he’s got it to such an extent that were it not for Stephenson’s past gamma [male] markers, I would almost suspect an epic, master-class trolling of the current genre.”
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:eye-poppi

Because of this, I supect one of three things is going on here:

1. Mr. Day actual read the book and realized that it was a very good book that deserves to be nominated.:rolleyes:

2. This is a cynical effort to make the Rabid Puppies list look "legitimate.":boggled:

3. Poxy's group is hoping to use the negative response to the "Puppies" to deny a nomination to an author whose work actual deserves one.:eek:
 
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I'd go for 2 and 3.

As an aside, why is being confident enough in oneself to allow that other people should be treated fairly being a "gamma male"? Methinks Vx* doth protest too much



*I consider him rather poisonous...
 
I think Beale would say or do anything in an attempt to appear relevant, but he's only good for an eyeroll and a bit of schadenfreude.
 
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