Insulars

Watching the Hugo Awards Implode

Max Misc , , , ,

Well, this is certainly interesting.

If you’ve been involved at all in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy world for the last few years, you’ve more than likely heard of the Hugo Awards, Worldcons infamous “Best Science-Fiction and Fantasy” award that’s been of more and more dubious quality over the last decade-plus. Which culminated in a social movement to try and wake it up that in turn saw the event show its true colors, with everything from mockery and public bullying (let us hand these “assterisk awards” to authors we don’t like) to witch hunts, statements about the ‘lower economic classes’ not being welcome, and even just plain reality distortion (‘A white male said this therefore—’ ‘That’s a woman, and they’re not white—’ ‘They’re male now, down with the patriarchy!’).

And faced with that and cries of “Go make your own Sci-Fi/Fantasy awards!” people did just that and left the Hugo Awards en mass. If, well, you can count what few numbers the Hugos managed to garner a “mass.” But they left. New awards rose up, and the insulars left running the Hugos and paying them any attention then, naturally, gnashed their teeth and threw little tantrums that how dare anyone try and compete with their legendary Hugos (crud, one such individual even has admitted publicly to trying to skew other awards, just because they can).

Anyway, point being, what I guessed would happen a few years ago (The Ent March) seems to have happened. The public was woken up by the Hugos antics. And guess what? They left. The Hugo Awards are down at low, low voting numbers once again while other awards that aren’t as staffed by the socially virulent are picking up the slack.

Which leads us to today, and what’s happened to Worldcon and the Hugos now that they got exactly what they wanted: Their own exclusive, tiny clique with no outside interference. Where they’re free of all the social injustices and “bigotries” of non-trufans. They got what they wanted.

Problem is … they can’t handle that.

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David Weber Speaks Up on “Disinviting” Convention Guests

Max Misc , , , , ,

This deserves to be read. I’m not going to post the whole thing here because, well, it’s David Weber’s take on things, not mine. I just happen to agree with it, so I’m going to spread and share the link to the post he made on the topic.

A little background if you haven’t heard what’s been going on, however. There’s a new trend that’s kicked up in the last month or so regarding conventions in the book world: See someone you disagree with announced as a guest at a con? Don’t just complain about it. Make up a bunch of horrible stuff, start a twitter-based lynch mob, and slam the convention organizers en mass in hopes that they’ll buckle under the deluge before anyone pauses and says “Wait a minute, this all sounds highly suspicious.”

It’s happened twice in the last month. Both times the accusations have been found entirely baseless, but even then, sometimes the con organizers have simply doubled-down and basically decided that even if it all was false, it’s just bad publicity, so no, those authors will no longer attend.

Weber’s reaction to this is well-said, and if you’re in the con circuit or thinking about getting into it, give it a read.

The Dragon Awards

Max Misc , , , , ,

In case you missed it, yesterday the winners of the Dragon Awards were announced and awarded.

What are the Dragon Awards? They’re a set of awards given out by Dragon Con, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Gaming con with over 70,000+ attendees—a pretty significant number compared to other cons out there. Still not heard of them? That’s fair. After all, this was their first year.

Yes, up until now Dragon Con has never had an award. But seeing the absolute meltdown going on over at the Hugo Awards over the last few years (where a tiny, frankly dying con has entrenched itself into the SJW blogsphere in an effort to save itself, insulting a rejecting anyone who didn’t agree with their narrative and taking steps to make sure only the “proper” people were involved, voting, and nominated), and hearing the cry from that same group of “Don’t like it? Go find a different award!” Dragon Con stepped up.

The result? An award that can both take nominations for and be voted on by anyone—anyone—with an e-mail address and an interest in the subject matter. For a con that is attended by over 70,000 people annually. Compared to the Hugo’s paltry attendance (most years below 5,000, actually) and rules and regulations that restrict voters to those who can pay a fee (and now, with recent changes, follow more stringent requirements), Dragon Con seems like a breath of fresh air.

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Op-Ed: Dealing with Detractors

Max Misc , , , , , , , , ,

I’m not filing this one under Being a Better Writer for the simple reason that it isn’t as much about improving your own writing as it is a tip for dealing with what may come when you do write. It’s definitely a writing tip, but a guide to make you a better writer? Well, it’ll touch on that, but this article isn’t entirely concerned with it.

So, detractors. For those of you scratching your heads right about now, what am I talking about.

Well, let’s make one thing clear. I’m not talking about critics. At least, not genuine, honest ones. Critics—good ones—are not detractors. Critics are critical, yes, but a good critic is also an individual who balances the good with the bad. They draw the creator’s attention to both the strong and the weak, giving those who view their criticism a balanced, aware presentation of the good and the bad.

A detractor, thusly, is not a real critic. A detractor is an individual who, for whatever reason, will never be satisfied nor happy with anything you create.

And once you put your writing out there, you can rest assured that the detractors will come. You will find them in writing groups. You will find them in comment threads. You’ll find them leaving “reviews” that serve only to savage. You can even find them in conversation about whatever medium their chosen target happens to fall in, bringing it up only to spread venom about it. No matter what your creation is, the detractors will come, and they will despise whatever you work, no matter the cause.

Why? Well, who can say? Some are simply trolls, the kind of individual who enjoys tearing others down for their own enjoyment. It doesn’t matter who, or what, if they sense a target, they’ll be there to tear into something or someone smug in the knowledge that even if the person on the other end of their words is going to have a day less sunny than it was before they spoke. They just enjoy making someone feel lousy.

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Casual Readers Not Welcome

Max Misc , , , , , , ,

Some of you might remember a post I made a few months back, during the lead-in to the whole Hugo Awards Fiasco, that asked the question “Am I a fan of Science-Fiction and Fantasy?”

Well, to my surprise this morning, I have an answer.

According to George R.R. Martin, I am not. You probably aren’t either. Instead, you are a “casual.”

At least on the one hand, we can all nod and applaud for consistency. Martin’s comments about people not being “true” Sci-Fi/Fantasy fans was what prompted my first post on the topic, but now, in a comment saved by Dawn Witzke over on her blog, we have a very direct statement addressing Mr. Martin’s exact thoughts on the nature of things:

You’re making the same mistake that many of the Puppies did — assuming that more voters would make the award more relevant.

If it were only the number of voters that mattered, the People’s Choice Award would be more important than the Oscars. It’s not. The Academy voters are fewer in number, but they bring more expertise to the decision. Same’s true of worldcon fans. These are people who live and breath SF and fantasy, for whom “fandom is a way of life,” not casual readers.

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Larry Correia On the Hugo Awards

Max Misc , , ,

So, Larry Correia, they guy who started the Sad Puppy movement in the first place, has written up his thoughts on last weekend’s Hugo Awards. As Larry was the one who started the whole Sad Puppies movement in the first place (all alone, three years ago), its an interesting look on the conflagration that swept through the awards on Saturday. It’s also pretty accurate. Larry doesn’t mince words, he goes right to it and talks about what SP was about, and how Saturday’s fire proved him right. He makes points like this—

I said that most of the voters cared far more about the author’s identity and politics than they did the quality of the work, and in fact, the quality of the work would be completely ignored if the creator had the wrong politics. I was called a liar.

—which when coupled with this tweet from a Hugo Awards voter—

Sandifer

—means one thing and one thing only. Larry was right. This award has been political for a long time.

There’s a few standout points from the article I’ll quote here below, but for the full effect, go read the article yourself. It’s worth it.

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The Countdown

Max Misc , , , ,

Tonight, the Hugo Award votes are tallied and the awards handed out. What’s the result going to be?

I hope it matters.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d like it to matter. And for a brief, flashing instant, it probably will. At least, for the reasons it should.

It should matter because the book/movie/whatever that wins the 2015 Hugo Award should be the award that fans of Sci-Fi/Fantasy voted for, and the one that the most Sci-Fi/Fantasy fans voted for. It should be the one that the largest number of fans agree on.

But for the last few years, that hasn’t mattered. For the last few years, the writing hasn’t mattered, the story hasn’t mattered, and certainly the fans haven’t mattered. That’s why this year came with reminders from a certain clique that newcoming voters to Worldcon weren’t real fans. And why if the Hugo Award actually functions as it’s supposed to, there’s going to be a brief flash of flame. Rage flame. Because the Insular hate-mongers that have been happily taking advantage of the fact that Hugo votership has been at rock bottom, at a point where just a few votes accounted for a win, are going to smear whoever wins if it isn’t them.

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And Sci-Fi/Fantasy Gets Crazier

Max Misc , , , , , , , ,

Wow.

I mean … wow.

With all the excitement of E3 over the last week and my work on short stories, I haven’t really been following the Hugo Awards that closely. After all, most of what was being said had died down to a pretty standard echo chamber, to the point where checking out File 770 was starting to feel like loading the same page with the names on most of the articles transposed one posting down and the same comments from the day before. Honestly, I know that Mike Glyer is just trying to chronicle the whole thing, but at this point, its all become so samey that it’s not really doing anyone a service. It’s sort of like advertising for a product like Comcast. Everyone knows their product is trash, that they’re a terrible company, and that you can’t take anything they say in their advertising as true, but they keep saying it anyway.

File 770 feels like a lot of that right now. Insular makes a blog post with outlandish, unresearched claims. The next day someone else makes it with the same claims, even if the first claim has been completely disproven. They don’t care, and they’re not going to read anything that challenges what they want to believe. The end result is that reading File 770 feels a bit like standing in an echo chamber full of Comcast ads. And that comparison is actually relevant because of what happened sometime last week: an editor at Tor lost her head online and said some things she really probably shouldn’t have.

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The Coming of the Ent March

Max Misc , , , , , , ,

So, Hugo Awards once more. I was tempted to talk about piracy again, since I found out this week exactly how hard that’s hitting my sales, but piracy is like any other crime: Most of the perpetrators refuse to see themselves as having done anything wrong, and will often accuse the one they’re pirating from of being “wrong” for being upset at stolen from. So saying anything is like shouting into a void. Which does say something nice about the current Hugo Awards. All the controversy aside, at least something’s changing here.

Which is what I wanted to talk about, but not with this year’s Hugo Award. No, I’m talking about next year’s Hugo Award. Because regardless of what happens this year, it’s only the first act of what’s to come … And that’s where part of the whole debate begins, I believe.

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Battle of the Lone-Star Reviews

Max Misc , , , , ,

No, I’m not talking about Spaceballs, though that’d certainly make for a fun post. Though, since I’ve brought it up, I might as well put a plug for it right here: If you haven’t seen Mel Brooks’ classic lampooning of Science-Fiction Space Opera, you definitely should. But this post isn’t going to be about that. No sadly, this post is going to be about some dirty pool that’s been played in conjunction with—what else?—the Hugo Awards.

Now, while I haven’t posted about the Hugo Awards in quite some time, that still doesn’t mean I haven’t been following them. At a distance, since even attempting to stick my neck into that mess, even to just post a quick comment, is the equivalent of stripping yourself naked and running into a no-man’s-land (quite literally) of trigger-happy, ad hominem attackers. Watching the comment threads circlejerk back and forth with congratulatory backslapping only cements how far this division has come—there are dedicated, very vocal commentators on both sides, a lot of whom (particularly on one side) absolutely refuse to talk to the other side. They want backslapping, not debate. They want a safe space to shout their opinions over and over again, with no challenge to their statements.

So yeah, not much reason to get involved in that. But there’s been a newer development that I’ve noticed. Now that the packets are out and the votes are being weighed, some parties have apparently decided that it’s not enough to do the whole “No Award everything we don’t like strategy.” Now there’s another tactic flying around.

Lone Star reviews.

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