Dear SJW's: We Sad Puppies CAN'T Repent

The 2016 Hugo Awards season is beginning to kick into gear -- and as you might expect, those of us who backed the Sad Puppies in last year's contest have begun receiving a slew of ludicrous demands and baseless accusations. Renounce Vox or admit you're his lackeys! Apologize for breaking our unspoken "rules" and distorting the "natural" vote! And while you're at it, repent and debase yourselves for locking out Andy Weir!

I'm sorry, folks, but we won't do what you ask.

Let's dispatch the final complaint first: The fact that Weir did not make the ballot last year was due to an unintentional error on our part. We were told he was ineligible for Best Novel last year because The Martian was originally self-published before the eligibility window, and we assumed - mistakenly, as it turned out - that this ineligibility extended to the Campbell as well. Geez, we're sorry we're new to the process! Excuse my French, but are you this shitty to all the newbies who are just hopping onto your learning curve?

Here's the truth: We all love Weir. We thought his novel was amazing. (For representative samples of our enthusiasm, see my review here and a Sad Puppy-generated list of great hard SF here.)  And this is just a hunch on my part, but since we know now that Weir remains eligible for a Campbell, I suspect he will not be left off this year's Sad Puppy recommendation list. So please - please - put a sock in it.

Regarding the second complaint, we won't apologize for our "slate" either, for four very simple reasons:

Number one, we've already acknowledged that the pool from which last year's recommendations were pulled was not as representative as it could've been, and we're already trying to cast a wider net when it comes to creating this year's list. Kate's site is open to everyone and is 100% transparent.

Number two, we had no idea last year's list would be that successful. The numbers for Sad Puppies I and Sad Puppies II simply did not presage what would happen with Sad Puppies III. We didn't bank on the Vile Faceless Minions getting involved, and we underestimated the enthusiasm within our own ranks.

Number three, Brad Torgersen may have called our list a "slate," but it was not deliberately designed to function in that manner. From the get-go, we Sad Puppies were encouraged to read the suggested works (hence the book bombs) and vote our conscience, and based on the numbers, most of us did. That's why Chuck Gannon's Trial By Fire did not make the ballot despite being featured on our list (which made me sad, by the way, but I suppose not enough of our group was able to read Chuck's novel in time). Yes: Vox may have encouraged people to vote a slate, and he did in fact appropriate much of our list, but the Rabid Puppies campaign was not our circus and not our monkeys. Stop mixing us up.  

Lastly - and most importantly - there is no such thing as a "natural vote." This is probably one of the biggest misconceptions that under-girds our opposition's argument: the idea that, before we philistines got involved, the Hugos highlighted works that were genuinely the best in the field -- which were selected by a group of high-minded, pure, and totally impartial fans. Ha. Ha ha. And again: ha. Do you know how many works of science fiction are published in a typical year? Many thousands. There is no one on God's green earth who is capable of reading them all. In reality, modern fandom (like any other large group of human beings) has always had its aristoi -- in this case, a small group of influential bloggers, reviewers, publishers, and magazine editors that routinely has an outsized impact, intentional or not, on what gets the hype and what doesn't. The only thing that's changed here is that some "politically objectionable" people have proven themselves to be a part of that aristoi and have decided not to play pretend. My suggestion? Make peace with the fact that factions will forever be with us. Man is inherently a political animal. Instead of denying this state of affairs, try to manage its effects by increasing overall participation on both ends of the Hugo process.

Now about Vox Day: We get it. You think he's Evil Incarnate and should be run out of fandom on a rail. But do you want to know a secret? Most of us don't like him either! And honestly, we don't understand your confusion; quite a few of us are on record stating that we do not share Vox's goals for the Hugo or his Alt Right views. Renounce him? We can't renounce something that's not our fault to begin with; as I noted above, we didn't ask Vox to steal our idea and use it to his own advantage. To reiterate: Not our circus, not our monkeys. In our view, the only person who should be held responsible for Vox's activities is Vox himself.  

And that brings me to some additional - and more philosophical - reasons why the Sad Puppies can't blacklist the Great Fannish Satan. First of all, personal responsibility is one of our lodestones. We don't believe authors or editors should be held to account for the views or actions of their fans because we don't believe anyone should be held to account for something they didn't personally do. We absolutely refuse to accept Cultural Marxist notions of collective guilt. The fact that Vox likes a particular writer does not and should not tar that writer for all eternity. This is classic argumentum ad hominem, and we won't accept such a fallacious line of reasoning no matter how many times you try to bully us into doing so.

Secondly, we are, to a man, cultural libertarians, and as such, we believe that having a political opinion - even a wrong and offensive opinion - is not in itself a crime and should not have any bearing on how we judge the quality of a person's work. Folks might object to my "not our circus" claim by pointing out, correctly, that Larry Correia put Vox on his list for Sad Puppies II. But this was not an actual endorsement of Vox's personal views. Larry was, admittedly, testing World Con's supposed commitment to "tolerance," but he and his fans also sincerely liked Vox's writing regardless of what they thought of the man himself. Speaking for myself, I didn't nominate Vox's story, but I did read it in the voter packet and concluded that Vox's detractors were likely allowing their personal antipathy to color their judgment. Failing to separate the author from the story? As far as the Sad Puppies are concerned, that is something we should all try to avoid.