Twitter Wars!


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Robspierre
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Robspierre »

KJA ended up being nominated because he was the choice of the Sad Puppies twats who are trying to fuck with the Hugo's because they think fandom is too liberal.

Rob
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Naïve mind »

Robspierre wrote:KJA ended up being nominated because he was the choice of the Sad Puppies twats who are trying to fuck with the Hugo's because they think fandom is too liberal.
I imagine everyone is too liberal for those guys. Here's a sample of the guy who came up with the list that dominated the Hugos.

The cost of educating women
One wonders how low birth rates have to fall in civilized countries before the elites begin to realize that the Taliban may not, in fact, be the stupid ones with regards to this particular matter (...) But there is no empirical evidence indicating that female education is societally beneficial, and there is an increasing amount of evidence that correlates it with a broad range of societal ills.
Yep, to him, a woman's place is in the home, not getting educated. Considering their attitude to things that, to most people, were adequately settled one hundred years ago, you can imagine their attitude towards things that are still under debate. His whole blog is like a parade of trans-batshit opinions. Nuts.
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Aquila ka-Hecate »

Naïve mind wrote:
Robspierre wrote:KJA ended up being nominated because he was the choice of the Sad Puppies twats who are trying to fuck with the Hugo's because they think fandom is too liberal.
I imagine everyone is too liberal for those guys. Here's a sample of the guy who came up with the list that dominated the Hugos.

The cost of educating women
One wonders how low birth rates have to fall in civilized countries before the elites begin to realize that the Taliban may not, in fact, be the stupid ones with regards to this particular matter (...) But there is no empirical evidence indicating that female education is societally beneficial, and there is an increasing amount of evidence that correlates it with a broad range of societal ills.
Yep, to him, a woman's place is in the home, not getting educated. Considering their attitude to things that, to most people, were adequately settled one hundred years ago, you can imagine their attitude towards things that are still under debate. His whole blog is like a parade of trans-batshit opinions. Nuts.
Never heard of Vox Day before now.

What a creep.

Albeit a relatively erudite one.
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Naib
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Naib »

If KJA ends up winning a Hugo that will kill the award. The only award that wanker deserves is a large heavy boot, awarded to his genitals. He could be awarded multiple times with that.
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Lawliet
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Lawliet »

That Vox Day guy is an asshole. Wikipedia says this about him:
In 2013 Beale ran unsuccessfully to succeed John Scalzi as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Later in 2013, he was investigated by the Board, who subsequently voted to expel him from the organization.[19] Beale maintains that the vote does not signify his expulsion from the organization.[20]
Beale is opposed to feminism,[32] writing that "I very much like women and wish them well, which is precisely why I consider women’s rights to be a disease that should be eradicated. For what is rather more difficult to dismiss are the simple and easily verifiable facts that indicate women have seldom been less able to pursue their dreams and less able to achieve their desires than today, the Golden Age of Feminism."[33]

He has compared immigration into the US by Mexicans and others with a military invasion,[34] specifically to Operation Barbarossa: "The Mexican invasion of the United States is ten times larger in scope than Operation Barbarossa, and especially in a quasi-democracy where voting rights are quickly and readily granted, a free trade-led invasion and occupation will lead to the political subjugation of the invaded that will last longer and can be more oppressive than an actual military occupation. Most of the 3.9 million Axis soldiers who invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 never fired a shot and the only substantive difference between a military invasion and a labor invasion is the failure to react by the government of the invaded nation."[35]

Feud with John Scalzi[edit]
Since 2005, Beale has been engaged in an online feud with science fiction writer John Scalzi. In February 2013, Scalzi attracted media attention with a pledge to pay $5 to various charities and nonprofit advocacy organizations every time Beale mentioned him; after others echoed this pledge, over $50,000 was pledged in under a week.[31]

Conflict with the SFWA[edit]
In June 2013, Beale used the SFWAuthors Twitter feed to post a link to his blog, in which he referred to African-American author N. K. Jemisin as "an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature" [36] and Teresa Nielsen Hayden as a "fat frog."[37] In August, after complaints from members and an investigation initiated by the board of the SFWA, Beale posted an excerpt of a letter from the SFWA president on his blog.[37] Jemisin later commented that "if you represent the civilization to which I’m supposed to aspire then I am all savage, and damned proud of it."[38]
Also...i can kill you with my brain. - River Tam

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Naïve mind
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Naïve mind »

Lawliet wrote:That Vox Day guy is an asshole.
His political views are certainly very far removed from the (American) mainstream. If you had a novel nominated for a Hugo mostly because of the endorsement of someone who is openly white nationalist, you'd expect some embarassment about it.

Maybe you would try to disavow the nomination, or at least note that you do not endorse those who endorse you.

Or you could just talk about the only thing you care about
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Sardaukar Capt
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

Vox Day is a moron and parasite but I don't think he's an organizer from what I read so I wouldn't condemn the whole group/movement just because that leach latched on because he sees them as "against Scalzi" and he hates Scalzi's guts.

I'm still baffled by The Hack's nom though :) No accounting for taste I suppose.
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Robspierre
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Robspierre »

No, Vox Day is one of the organizers and heavily involved in attempting to hijack the Hugo's. He is also a dominionist which is an extreme form of christianity...


Rob
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Ampoliros
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Ampoliros »

The rigging on this scale is enough to invalidate the Hugo. At least some of the people nominated have backed out due to how they got the nomination.

2015 Hugo already means jack shit.

I'm a bit surprised the people who run the Hugo haven't just thrown out all the ballots and redone it with some safeguards.
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Naïve mind
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Naïve mind »

Sardaukar Capt wrote:Vox Day is a moron and parasite but I don't think he's an organizer from what I read so I wouldn't condemn the whole group/movement just because that leach latched on because he sees them as "against Scalzi" and he hates Scalzi's guts.
Larry Correia came up with the 'Sad Puppies' list; Vox Day came up with his more radical 'Rabid Puppies' list, which mostly contains titles from his own publishing house. If you look at the Hugo nominations, it's the 'Rabid Puppies' list, not the 'Sad Puppies'.

Maybe there's a legitimate 'Sad Puppies' movement that's just about the unheard voice of white men who write uncomplicated Space Opera :violin: , but it's probably dwarfed by scary Vox Day groupies (If you think he is bad, read the replies to his blog posts)
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Hunchback Jack »

Been reading up on the Hugos 2015 debacle, and heard a story about it on the radio. Also read these:

https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/20 ... puppies-3/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/20 ... e-fiction/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

... to get one view from a supporter.

Personally, I think the Sad Puppies' efforts are completely misguided - whether politically-motivated or not - because they equate popularity with quality. Eric Flint might be a fine storyteller who has published successful novels over decades - and a swell guy to boot - but that doesn't mean he deserves a Hugo. In my mind, a Hugo is like a Nobel Prize of the SF world - particular the written awards. The winning work should be ground-breaking, mind-bending, or just very very very well-written.

That probably sounds elitist, but I really think that's what the Hugos should represent. Maybe that makes them "less relevant" to the consumers of SF-as-mainstream media, but I don't care. I already know what books and movies are *popular*, because they get all the media attention; I think the Hugo should provide guidance on what SF is *good*. And there's no reason why popular, groundbreaking, influential mainstream SF can't qualify for a Hugo by that criteria.

Maybe the Hugos have never actually achieved this role, but it's seemed to aspire to this, at least to me. And while there's some truth to the white male dominance historically, I think that has changed as the readers and writers of the genre have changed.

In any case, I don't think gaming the system is any kind of solution, regardless of the motives of those doing it.

Anyway, enough of my preaching. Apparently a couple of the nominees have bowed out because they were on one of the Puppies' vote sheets, and don't want to win under such circumstances. Not KJA, though (even though he's supported by the Puppies).

The whole thing is very sad. The Hugos once meant something, and lasted longer as such than virtually any award. Now they are virtually meaningless.

HBJ
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Sardaukar Capt
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

It could be worse.

.
.
.
.

McDune could have been nominate :puke:
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Ampoliros
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Ampoliros »

Honestly, the damage is done in that the nomination itself is supposed to have gravitas. I'm considering getting a supporting membership just to add one more counter to how this whole slate was cooked up. Regardless of how I feel about KJA and what he's done to Dune, none of his work even deserves the consideration for this because its just not of the quality for a Hugo. It would totally be understandable if not mind boggling for him to win a popularity award, but not a Hugo for Best Novel .

And yes, its very much a popularity = quality issue that ruins the meaning of the Hugo award. I certainly hope they change the rules to block slate voting. Any author who stays on the list after being added like this doesn't deserve the award.

Its like giving "Transformers" the Oscar for Best Picture.
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

I think you are giving the Hugos too much credit. It's a fan voted award. It's the "Peoples Choice Award" of the sci-fi world. If you are looking for quality vs popularity or Oscar type comparison, you should look at the Nebula which is voted on by the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Writers of America. It's a peer voted on reward. Not something voted on by paying members of the World Sci-Fi Convention of who anyone can join. While it might have been prestigious at one time, I think the Hugos have been ruined by all the slate campaigning by all sides over the past decade to serve their own political and social agendas over the quality of the work.
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Omphalos »

For many years the Hugos got it right. Then the genre became inflated with fanbois an tourists and the way that works were selected became - to me - an exercise in the identification of the lowest common denominator. Now we have a group of crybabies who have taken that trend to the next step.

There is no recovery from something like this. The pit that they have dug for themselves is too deep.
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Ampoliros »

Sardaukar Capt wrote:I think you are giving the Hugos too much credit. It's a fan voted award. It's the "Peoples Choice Award" of the sci-fi world. If you are looking for quality vs popularity or Oscar type comparison, you should look at the Nebula which is voted on by the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Writers of America. It's a peer voted on reward. Not something voted on by paying members of the World Sci-Fi Convention of who anyone can join. While it might have been prestigious at one time, I think the Hugos have been ruined by all the slate campaigning by all sides over the past decade to serve their own political and social agendas over the quality of the work.

Good point, its possible I was confusing the two. And I have to agree with Omph, any prestige the award has is now squandered.
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Hunchback Jack »

I agree that for a long time the Hugo's got it right - and by that, I mean they not only recognized the best SF of the year - in noms, if not the winners - but they acted as a kind of touchstone as to where the SF genre was headed, and what works were influential.

Certainly less so lately, though, and I agree that with this latest development, it will likely never be so again.

HBJ
"The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."
- Carl Sagan

I'm still very proud of The Quarry but … let's face it; in the end the real best way to sign off would have been with a great big rollicking Culture novel.
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Omphalos »

Ampoliros wrote:
Sardaukar Capt wrote:I think you are giving the Hugos too much credit. It's a fan voted award. It's the "Peoples Choice Award" of the sci-fi world. If you are looking for quality vs popularity or Oscar type comparison, you should look at the Nebula which is voted on by the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Writers of America. It's a peer voted on reward. Not something voted on by paying members of the World Sci-Fi Convention of who anyone can join. While it might have been prestigious at one time, I think the Hugos have been ruined by all the slate campaigning by all sides over the past decade to serve their own political and social agendas over the quality of the work.

Good point, its possible I was confusing the two. And I have to agree with Omph, any prestige the award has is now squandered.
Just my opinion, but I never thought he Nebulas got it right. Well, rarely maybe. But the winners of that award are usually too esoteric. I think authors generally look at a limited number of factors; I think they tend to select winners based on how much they want to be like the authors who penned them. They look at things that I think are more important to mainstream literature, such as character, setting, conflict, literary quality, etc. I think that they tend to ignore all the other important factors such as plot and the use of SF themes. I also do think that popularity does have a role, but should not play a deciding one.
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Naïve mind »

Hunchback Jack wrote:I agree that for a long time the Hugo's got it right - and by that, I mean they not only recognized the best SF of the year - in noms, if not the winners
I've been looking at the list of past winners as well, and I find I mostly 'agree' that the winners are deserving until the 80s or 90s. Occasionally, it's obvious that the Hugo was awarded to an author rather than to a novel, but that's a minor thing. But I have to ask myself if I agree because the Hugo winning novels from those years have entered the canon as 'classics', and have remained in print and in libraries for far longer.

So, who knows, in a few decades, KJA's novel might be one of the 'classics' ...
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Post by lotek »

If that happens, it means humanity will have become amoebas.
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Re: Twitter Wars!

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It would always be an outlier, even people unaware of his writing make the same points over and over, even for his "Hugo nominated" book:

http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1 ... geNumber=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"I'm not sure if I've grown as a reader (since reading the original Saga, which I LOVED) and gotten used to ridiculously complex novels like Weber's Safehold series, or if Mr. Anderson has started writing for a younger audience, or what, but this book seemed way too simple and straightforward to me. It felt like pop music - generic, simple, and difficult to enjoy but even so, kinda catchy.

I could recommend it for readers who prefer to keep things simple or teenagers. I can also see it being a good audiobook."
And that's from a 3-star review.

Even when one of his books stumbles across something that might actually make interesting speculative fiction, it deals with it as if it was an episode of Teletubbies, bright lights and fast moving objects overshadow it all. When he isn't just going full on gore pornish to pretend its 'edgy' or mature.

500 years from now when curators are digging through past awards and classic sci-fi, KJA will still be a joke. You can disagree with another books premise or style or even its marginal quality, but the Hack's books are on their own level of terrible from virtually every angle.

That curator a half millenia in the future would certainly end up checking out how such an outlier was chosen.
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

The sad thing is he will probably win and be seen as the "safe" choice to vote for because of name recognition while the sides of the political fight try to "no-award" other nominations they don't deem worthy or that are only on there because of all the infighting.
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Re: Twitter Wars!

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Ampoliros wrote:It would always be an outlier, even people unaware of his writing make the same points over and over, even for his "Hugo nominated" book:

http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1 ... geNumber=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"I'm not sure if I've grown as a reader (since reading the original Saga, which I LOVED) and gotten used to ridiculously complex novels like Weber's Safehold series, or if Mr. Anderson has started writing for a younger audience, or what, but this book seemed way too simple and straightforward to me. It felt like pop music - generic, simple, and difficult to enjoy but even so, kinda catchy.

I could recommend it for readers who prefer to keep things simple or teenagers. I can also see it being a good audiobook."
And that's from a 3-star review.

Even when one of his books stumbles across something that might actually make interesting speculative fiction, it deals with it as if it was an episode of Teletubbies, bright lights and fast moving objects overshadow it all. When he isn't just going full on gore pornish to pretend its 'edgy' or mature.

500 years from now when curators are digging through past awards and classic sci-fi, KJA will still be a joke. You can disagree with another books premise or style or even its marginal quality, but the Hack's books are on their own level of terrible from virtually every angle.

That curator a half millenia in the future would certainly end up checking out how such an outlier was chosen.
Kevin's work dumbs down the readers, so each book may be its own self fulfilling prophecy. Idiocracy, here we come!
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Hunchback Jack »

To be clear, KJA being on the Sad Puppies list is mostly due to him being a buddy of one of the guys who puts it together. And his being on the list is one reason he was nominated.

Would he have been nominated anyway? Impossible to tell, which is precisely the problem with what the Sad Puppies have done.

HBJ
"The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."
- Carl Sagan

I'm still very proud of The Quarry but … let's face it; in the end the real best way to sign off would have been with a great big rollicking Culture novel.
- Iain Banks
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Re: Twitter Wars!

Post by Omphalos »

Hunchback Jack wrote:Would he have been nominated anyway? Impossible to tell,
Sorry but, is this a joke? Anderson nominated for any award other than the Kevin J. Anderson Award for Punctuality in Submissions?

Not seeing that.
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