'No award' sweeps the Hugo Awards following controversy

[blogslut]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/23/no-award-hugo-awards-following-controversy

Liu Cixin won for Best Novel, but the controversial Puppy slate of nominees led to an unprecedented number of categories in which no award was given

The Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin won the big prize for best novel at the 2015 Hugo Awards in Spokane, Washington, on Saturday night. Guardians of the Galaxy got a nod for best dramatic presentation, long form and an episode of the BBC’s Orphan Black won the equivalent short-form award.

Hugo voters, however, gave “no award” in five categories, including best novella and best short story.

The World Science Fiction Society noted in its announcement of winners that the “no awards” were without precedent. Five, they said, was also “the total number of times that WSFS members have presented no award in the entire history of the Hugo Awards, most recently in 1977”.

The unprecedented number of no award votes followed a controversy over a voting bloc, known as the Sad and/or Rabid Puppies, that loaded the ballot earlier this spring...

[shenmue]

1. Why would puppies do a bad thing?

Everybody likes puppies.

[ThoughtCriminal]

2. Wait. What?

"Guardians of the Galaxy" gets a Hugo, but they could not come up with a single novella or short story that was worthy due to some kind of troll voting block?

[Retrograde]

4. Yes, basically

It is possible to game the nominations by organizing a small-sized (in this case, about 200 people) who vote in lockstep. One upshot was that there was a much larger number of voters for the final ballot, including people like me who are on the periphery and don't often vote. And, yes, I've read all the fiction nominees: aside from the novels, the best was "not bad". Some of the nominees were downright atrocious.

[eridani]

3. John Scalzi on the side of the angels as usual

http://whatever.scalzi.com/

[eridani]

5. Couple of other links

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/

The evening began with an appearance by a fan cosplaying as the Grim Reaper, and it turned out he was there for the Puppies. Not a single Puppy-endorsed candidate took home a rocket. In the five categories that had only Puppy-provided nominees on the ballot—Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Related Work, and Best Editor for Short and for Long Form—voters instead preferred “No Award.


http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/08/23/no-puppy-love-at-science-fictions-hugo-awards/

Supporters and opponents of the Puppies have been warring online since the nominations were announced, with the rhetoric often getting heated. The Puppies’ supporters contend the Hugos are biased against traditional, popular forms of science fiction and fantasy, like stories of space battles and magic quests, in favor of works with liberal perspectives and “literary” aims.

[MrModerate]

6. Sometimes the dickheads lose . . .

And this is one of the satisfying times when that's happened.

Now Vox Day, Torgerson, Correia, can slither back under their rocks.

[PufPuf23]

7. Dickheads means something different among science fiction fans

where Dickhead refers to person partial to the works of Philip K Dick (who once won a Hugo for The Man in the High Castle but has received far more recognized success since his death in 1982 than as a living writer).

Otherwise I agree.

Maybe asshats??

[MrModerate]

8. I'd go with asshats . . .

And while I'm not a dickhead myself (the only book of his I can stomach is Man in the High Castle), I was using the term in the more usual, non-SF form.

I'll give Torgerson and Correia asshat status, but Vox Day (I won't type his real name) is a psychopath — and not in a good way.

[SheilaT]

9. This is a long and somewhat complicated story.

I'm a science fiction person and I've been following this from a distance, but I don't really know enough to explain it well. You could probably google "sad puppies" and "Hugo awards" and find out all you need to know.

But in a nutshell, a group of self-styled "sad puppies" decided that political correctness has gone too far, used the rules for voting to install a block of nominees, and they lost.

Connie Willis, who is possibly the most revered writer in s-f right now (disclosure: I love what she writes, I've met her at several events and I tend to refer to her as The Goddess. She's a wonderful writer, and absolutely amazing in person. Completely approachable, chatty, funny, very knowledgeable.) declined the honor of presenting an award this year because of the entire "sad puppies" nonsense.

It is possible the Hugos will undergo a huge change after this. I don't know. I'm not privy to such decision-making.

What's really distressing in all this, that even though the Hugos are a popular vote, rather than a juried award (unlike, say, the Campbell and the Sturgeon awards given at the Campbell Conference, held in Lawrence, KS every year), they have always been a pretty good indicator of books, stories, and so on worth reading. There were writers who withdrew their names and works from consideration this year because of the "sad puppies". A shame, because they would have deserved the nomination and possibly the actual Hugo, but chose not to be associated with such scum.

[starroute]

10. They've enacted something called "E Pluribus Hugo"

Basically, it applies to nominations something like the Australian ballot that's been used in the final voting for decades. There's a brief description at http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016283.html and a much longer FAQ at http://sasquan.org/e-pluribus-hugo-faq/

However, it takes two years for any changes to the rules to go through, which means next year will still be happy fun time -- and the Puppies are already planning their next campaign of mayhem.

Breitbart has also been pushing the Puppy campaigns (which are allied to GamerGate) really hard, and the reporter who's been doing those stories will be writing the introduction to Vox Day's next book. So it's going to keep getting more interesting.

And for what it's worth, George R.R. Martin awarded his own "Alfies" (after Alfred Bester, who won the first Hugo for Best Novel in 1953) to some people who were pushed off the ballot by the Puppy slates.
http://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/

The complete might-have-been listing is at http://io9.com/this-is-what-the-2015-hugo-ballot-should-have-been-1725967147

[SheilaT]

11. Thanks for all that information and the links.

Do you write science fiction? You must be well connected to the s-f community, even better than I thought I was.

[starroute]

12. I've been seeing a lot of this stuff on Facebook

I had been out of touch with SF fandom for years, but Facebook put me back in touch with all the people I knew 30 and 40 years ago and now I see all the latest gossip. I also have one friend who just eats up all the technical rules-change stuff, and she was posting about EPH.

[SheilaT]

13. Aha!

I live in New Mexico, home of George RR Martin and many other science fiction writers. I hang out in s-f, do a bit of writing of my own.