Interesting News!

As reported on the official site for the Hugo Awards:

This year’s Worldcon, Loncon 3, has announced that participation in the Hugo Awards is now officially at an all-time high. Loncon 3 received 3,587 valid Hugo Award final ballots (3,571 online, 16 paper). The previous high was 2,100 final ballots cast by members of the 2011 Worldcon, Renovation.

OOH-RAH! If we want the Hugo Award to represent the preferences of more than just the inner clique, this is a trend that must continue -- and that means getting even more people involved. Sad Puppies 2 was great, but Sad Puppies 3 should blow its predecessors out of the water.

Which means, of course, that during the closing months of 2014, we Human Wavers - and anyone else who, in Eric S. Raymond's formulation, wants to drag science fiction "back into the gutter where it belongs" - need to get busy and do the following:

1. Convince friends and family to participate. I for one am going to do my damnedest to persuade both my father and my co-author to buy supporting memberships for the next World Con. If you know anyone who's a fan of science fiction and/or fantasy but hasn't yet participated as a World Con voter because he or she doesn't feel said participation would matter, point them to this bit of news and remind them that a supporting membership is quite affordable and - oh by the way - comes with a lot of free stuff.
2. Start assembling our nominations lists for 2015. I will be scrolling back through this year's reviews to select my favorites, and you all should do that too. But beyond that, we also need to come together in online reading groups and discuss the worthies we find. In the down-ballot categories especially, it's hard to generate enough votes to seize a nomination unless you have a dedicated group of backers who are all willing to vote for the same thing. The upside? The dedicated group of backers does not have to be that large. Among our motley crew of Huns, Barflies, and Monster Hunters, we have enough people to seriously kick some ass. We just need to get organized. (Yes, I know, I know -- it's like herding cats. But Larry Correia seems to have had some luck.)

I'm hoping the high participation rate for this year's Hugo Awards leads to an upset in at least one category -- but regardless of the outcome, I'm still very excited. We have a real chance to turn things around and restore the Hugo to its former glory as a people's choice award. Let's not let this opportunity pass us by!

The 2014 Hugos: My Final Novella Ballot

For those keeping score:

1. The short stories that received the Hugo nod this year were heinous.
2. The novelettes, however, were better.

And where do the novellas fall? Well -- here, we had more of a mixed bag. My final ballot is as follows:

1. The Chaplain's Legacy by Brad Torgersen. This novella, in which enemies at war are forced to confront their differences and cooperate for the benefit of all, is easily - EASILY - the best story on the short list in any category, and the reason is simple: It's the only nominated work whose appeal has the potential to be universal. Consider, for example, how Brad tackles his religious themes. Barlow, the male lead, is agnostic; Adanaho, the female lead, is a devout Coptic Christian; and the mantes aliens are atheistic. In the story, they all discuss their beliefs - or lack thereof - but no side is portrayed as somehow less worthy of respect. Brad allows us to sympathize with Barlow's doubt, connect with Adanaho's faith, and understand the mantes' intellectual puzzlement because he portrays all of their thoughts honestly and without distortion. A fair-mindedness that considers all angles and makes no assumptions? In fandom, sadly, this is becoming vanishingly rare. The Chaplain's Legacy also paints a very optimistic picture of the power of cultural congress to settle conflicts and achieve genuine peace (which should appeal to readers of a more liberal sentiment), presents male sexuality as a powerful temptation that can nonetheless be resisted (which should appeal to cultural conservatives), asks questions about the overwhelming dominance of technology in both human and mantes society (ditto), and stars a strong female character who outranks the male lead (which should appeal to feminists). How does Brad straddle all these lines? He does it by focusing on the story first and by thoroughly understanding his human and alien characters at a fundamental level. BRAVO. More like this, please!
2. The Butcher of Khardov by Dan Wells. The gap in quality between the first and the second slot is huge on this ballot, but I still appreciate Wells' ability to dive into a monstrous mind and explain how and why it became monstrous -- something you don't normally encounter in a basic game tie-in story. Great literary fantasy? No -- but I enjoyed it far more than the other three novellas on the list.
3. No Award.
4. Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente. This one made it onto my ballot on creativity points alone; admittedly, Valente did a damned good job remixing the Snow White story and slotting it into her Gold Rush-era setting. Unfortunately, this novella is as annoyingly and stridently political as "The Waiting Stars." Valente really, really wants you to know that white people impose impossible standards on "people of color" and are thus capital-E Evil, and she hammers the point home every chance she gets. Ugh! Way to ruin a concept with great potential!

Left off of the ballot entirely: Equoid by Charles Stross and Wakulla Springs by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages. The latter novella, set during the Jim Crow era in Florida, is well-written but not sci-fi/fantasy, and the former? Well, I started off liking Stross' style a little and had high hopes -- but then I got to the tentacle rape of an under-aged girl and just -- couldn't continue. Why, Mr. Stross? Why?

And that -- finishes up my Hugo commentary for this week. Next week, after I finish my reviews for Rescue Mode and Stardogs, I'll talk about Larry Correia, Toni Weisskopf, and at least one general trend in this year's short list that I found worrying. Until then, stay tuned!

The 2014 Hugos: My Final Novelette Ballot

So, as I observed in my last post on the Hugos, the short story category seems to be in real trouble. I've been a Hugo voter for four years now, and I can honestly say that I have not yet read a nominated short story that I truly loved. I'm consequently left wondering: Where is today's Ray Bradbury? And what do we have to do to wrench that talent out of obscurity and bring him or her to the attention of the World Con audience?

Thankfully, the novelette category is not as dominated by dreck. As a matter of fact, I think the novelette category is the strongest category in this year's short list. All the stories could legitimately be classified as sci-fi/fantasy, and I only felt prompted to leave one off the ballot. Below is my final ranking with explanations for each choice:

1. "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" by Ted Chiang. Yes, this surprises me too. I have either actively disliked or simply felt indifferent about other stories written by this author, but this novelette is a remarkably balanced exploration of enhancements to human memory and their impacts on society and our relationships. The sections dealing with literacy's effect on an oral indigenous culture scared me at first, but in the end, Chiang doesn't really come down on the side of "the literate Europeans are evil despoilers!" And the sections dealing with the futuristic "life logs" and "Remem" search engines actually did make me think. Indeed, Mom and I had a pretty good discussion in re: this story and whether we thought perfect mechanical memory was desirable. Ultimately, we decided we disagreed with Chiang's narrator; Mom pointed out that forgetfulness is often how child abuse victims and sufferers of PTSD protect themselves and heal, and I think she's absolutely right. But our dissent does not in any way alter my judgment that "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" is good science fiction -- not of the optimistic "ray guns and aliens" space opera/adventure type, to be sure, but the genre has also been built on reflective pieces that tackle technology and its interactions with human nature, and I would like to see more in this mode.
2. "The Exchange Officers" by Brad Torgersen. If you don't like hard military science fiction, this is probably not the story for you. In my opinion, however, the near-future depicted here is well-conceived and all-too-plausible -- as is the future tech. I think Brad has written other stories that are far superior to this one (see also: my upcoming post on the novellas) -- but this is still a solid piece.
3. "Opera Vita Aeterna" by Vox Day. Day needs to control his urge to show off his erudition; the old-fashioned style of his prose and the lengthy dialogues on Thomistic theology do weigh down this story and prevent me from giving it a higher ranking. "Opera Vita Aeterna" is far from awful, though. What I especially appreciate is the message: Even if you come from entirely different backgrounds - and even if you hold radically opposed worldviews - you can still build a friendship based on mutual respect. And the fact that the atheistic elf never really changes his mind despite the efforts of the devout abbot makes this a fair work and not, as many of Day's detractors might assume, a piece of religious propaganda.
4. No Award.
5. "The Lady Astronaut of Mars" by Mary Robinette Kowal. This story deeply disturbs me for reasons I will explain in just a moment, but I didn't leave it off the ballot because I did connect, on some level, with Kowal's depiction of Nathaniel's terminal illness and thought it was well-written and accurate. I can't accept the conclusion, though. I don't like that Nathaniel's acquiescence to his own abandonment is depicted as noble. People are needy -- and as they get older and sicker, they only become needier. This is the natural progression of life that you must accept when, in an act of will, you decide to love someone. To imply that this inevitable dependence is an unfair burden and not an integral feature of a marriage is to fundamentally misunderstand what marriage is. It also misses the many ways we can become better when we comfort someone who is suffering. Dad, for example, may be a pretty irreverent character most of the time, but he becomes something else entirely when Mom is not well -- someone who may just get into heaven despite his occasionally sacrilegious jests. Consequently, I'm convinced - and there are very few things I believe with a fiercer passion - that my dad has been saved (in the Christian sense) in the act of caring for my mom -- and that while chronic and/or terminal illness is difficult and ugly, it is not ultimately purposeless or something we should avoid.

And as for "The Waiting Stars," in which sentient ship "Minds" are pulled from their rightful homes and forced to inhabit limited bodies in a society that curtails their rights? That didn't make it onto my ballot, as I found it difficult to look past the author's obvious desire to air her feminist and racial grievances -- and there were no other features of the story that really grabbed me.

Next up: the novellas!

The 2014 Hugos: My Final Short Story Ballot

As the voting deadline is fast approaching, we have now reached that special time of year at which I share my impressions of this year's short list for the Hugo Awards. In this post, I will start with the short stories, for which my ballot will look something like this:

1. No Award

2.

3.

4.
5.

Harsh? Perhaps, but I have my reasons.

First of all, while all four stories are technically competent, only one can arguably be classified as sci-i/fantasy ("The Ink Readers of Doi Saket" -- if you squint at it sideways); the others are mundane stories in genre dress. "Selkie Stories Are for Losers," for example, would not have fundamentally changed even if the narrator's mother had abandoned her family for wholly ordinary reasons, and "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere" would've held together as a basic "coming out" tale even without - well - the water. Both "Selkie..." and "The Water..." may have included fantastic elements, but neither the Gaelic folklore in "Selkie..." nor the mystical lie detector in "The Water..." was critical to the flow of its story. The otherworldly element in both cases was mere ornament -- and in my view, you can't simply shoehorn a little unnecessary magic into a literary story and sneak it in under the sci-fi/fantasy banner. In sci-fi/fantasy, the magic - or the advanced technology - is an inalienable feature, not a careless afterthought.  

Secondly, every story on this list features a grim worldview, unsympathetic characters, or both:

• In "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love," the point-of-view character sits beside her lover's hospital bed and imagines what would happen if said lover were a man-sized T-Rex who could gut his reportedly bigoted attackers. Not only does this daydream not count as sci-fi/fantasy (the narrator could've just as easily imagined her lover as a three-hundred pound black belt in Tae Kwon Do and an expert in combat weaponry without the skeleton of the story being altered one iota), it is also, in essence, revenge porn -- and I don't want to see that. Indeed, it makes me worry about the mental health of the fandom in general that such a tale has apparently been embraced by so many.
• In "Selkie Stories Are for Losers," the point-of-view character finds her mother's selkie skin in the attic and consequently loses her mother to the call of the sea. To "deal with" her (understandable) feelings of abandonment, said point-of-view character smokes weed and plans to run off to Colorado with her girlfriend. Needless to say, I was not impressed with this particular coping strategy. 
• "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere," which features a gay Chinese man struggling with the prospect of introducing his boyfriend to the rest of his family, is probably the least off-putting story of the four, but even here, the main character is unattractively passive and lets his domineering sister run roughshod over his feelings.
• Finally, in "The Ink Readers of Doi Saket," a corrupt monk drowns an innocent boy in a river, and the spirit of the victim reads - and grants - the wishes of his fellow Thai. This might not have been so bad if the wishes in question weren't so self-serving and pointless. One character, for instance, wishes that her husband would be cured of his impotence. Really? We're going to murder a boy just so one of his neighbors can have sex? That's both awful and frankly nihilistic.      

So yes -- I'm going scorched earth with this particular category. If this is the best World Con voters can do, we need to widen the pool.

Standing Up

I have a confession to make: I'm a wimp. I hate confrontation with the fire of a thousand suns. Consequently, in fannish spaces, I very rarely make my political leanings known. I button up. I stay silent. I keep my reactions internal -- or confined to this blog, which is deliberately divorced from my fan identity. I let a thousand outrageous calumnies pass without comment -- because I tell myself there's no point in starting a shouting match. I've considered "coming out" to the folks I roleplay with -- but in the end, I've always chickened out because I don't want to ruin something fun.

I'm starting to feel guilty, though. While I do continue to believe that politics should be avoided in certain contexts and at certain times, I wonder -- have I contributed to the current mess by keeping my trap shut too often? Have there been times I haven't spoken up -- but should have? Have I been entirely too polite?

Fandom's illiberal progressives clearly think they are the majority. You can see that in the way they behave. This week, after the release of the Hugo shortlist, they urged their readers to rank "No Award" above Brad Torgersen, Larry Correia, Vox Day, and Toni Weisskopf, arguing that these folks don't deserve a fair appraisal of their work because they are hatey-hatemongers -- and then turned around and accused Larry's fans of cheapening the process without any sense of irony. They stated, baldly, that Larry clearly cheated, convinced that no one would've voted for Warbound out of genuine appreciation. They have also repeatedly engaged in outright slander, claiming that Larry is a racist and a homophobe who wants to drag gays behind his pick-up truck without citing anything Larry has actually written that would warrant such a serious charge. Overall, they've openly delighted in constructing and torching strawmen, refusing to engage honestly with their opposition. Why? Because they think they can get away with it. They are confident nearly everyone agrees with them.

But they're wrong -- and I was wrong too. I believed I was in a small minority, but this week has fundamentally changed my estimation. Fandom does tilt left-of-center - 'tis the tendency of most communities with a creative bent - but the illib-prog base of support isn't as powerful as I once thought. There has been push-back -- a lot of push-back, and from several unanticipated quarters. A number of left-leaning folks have posted supportive comments on Larry's blog, for example, essentially stating, "I may not agree with your politics, but I also think this is stupid. And by the way, I love your books!" Can you imagine what would happen if we right-leaning folks and fandom's intellectually honest leftists banded together? Maybe - just maybe - we'd wipe the floor with these illib-progs once and for all and restore fandom's original small-L liberalism, which allowed writers with diverse - and often controversial - viewpoints to exist side-by-side without the entire universe imploding every five minutes.

Sure -- the illib-progs currently have a stranglehold on SFWA. Sure -- they also have a strong internet presence. But they are not the majority; WE ARE -- and by "we," I'm referring to fans of all creeds and political inclinations who are sick of this jack-booted bunch and its toxic attempts to impose conformity and goodthink on the rest of us. For too long, our silence has encouraged the illib-progs' over-inflated sense of their own popularity and moral rectitude -- but we are legion, and neither you nor I should be afraid to call these people out for the hypocritical fascists they are.

It's time for us to stand up -- and tell the world we won't stand for ideological witch hunts.

It's time for us to stand up -- and declare ourselves determined enemies of censorship.

It's time for us to stand up -- and demand that people argue in good faith and stop twisting what their opponents say.

It's time for us to stand up -- and confront illib-progs when they are being abusive and dishonest bullies.

It's time for us to stand up and take our fandom back.

Lo! In the Distance, Hear the Yip-Yap of Happy Puppies! (And Also Much Wailing & Gnashing of Teeth)

The nominations for the Hugo Awards have been announced, and personally, I couldn't be more pleased with the results -- even if I now find myself faced with the terrifying task of reading all fourteen novels in the Wheel of Time series before, I presume, the middle or end of July.

Others, however, are not pleased -- because some outspoken perpetrators of badthink have made the list. Google "Larry Correia Hugo Awards" for a sampling of some of the vitriol. Since Saturday night, allegations of cheating have been running rampant in the science fiction blogosphere. Some have accused Larry - and Vox Day - of "stuffing the ballot box" by buying World Con memberships for friends and relatives and then voting in their stead, while others have simply declared that these authors' supporters, lemming-like, blindly voted for their proposed slates out of a base desire to troll the awards and not out of any genuine appreciation for the works in question.

Well, it's time to burst their bubble.

I was inspired to pay into World Con and participate in the nominations process in large part due to Larry Correia's blog posts, so you can count me as a member of the "Correia Bloc." At no point did I feel pressured to support any work Larry promoted. There was a considerable amount of overlap between my slate and Larry's, but that's because we have similar tastes in science fiction and fantasy -- and not because I was licking Larry's boots. I didn't vote for anything or anyone I had not read - Vox Day didn't make it onto my slate, and neither did Dan Wells - and quite frankly, I resent the implication I am both dumb enough to be led by others and dishonest enough to vote for anyone based on their politics alone. Granted, I did have an agenda -- but that was to support stories that brought back the genre's old sense of adventure. While I'm certainly enjoying all the myriad ways leftist fen are showing their true illiberal colors, GHH screaming is merely a bonus and never was my primary objective. My primary objective was and is to support works I've enjoyed.

It is truly the height of arrogance to assume - as many have - that Larry could only have gotten onto the ballot via underhanded means. Larry has made it onto the New York Times best-seller list, is currently ranked #77 in his category on Amazon (which, considering the size of the field, is amazing), has had his books translated into other languages, and has won other awards for his work. Indeed, Larry has made enough money now that he's been able to retire to Yard Moose Mountain to write full time. In short, Larry has a butt-load of fans. They just haven't showed up before now -- because until this year, World Con was fading into obscurity and taking the Hugo Awards with it.

Let's face it: In a good year, World Con will attract maybe 4000-5000 attendees, and of those, only a fraction actually send in a ballot for the Hugos. And the people who select the shortlist? That's an even more rarefied group. For the 2014 awards, almost 2000 people submitted nominations -- a figure that smashed all previous records. In the meantime, tens of thousands of people routinely attend Dragon Con - the con I have worked for the past seven years and one that is frequently held on the same weekend as World Con - and over time, its crowds have been steadily growing. In 2004, Dragon Con was held in two downtown Atlanta hotels; ten years later, that number has ballooned to five. Yes -- there are many reasons for this discrepancy, including the decline of reading in general and the overwhelming success of genre media. But Dragon Con's hoards are what I call a potential audience. They clearly like things that are fantastic and geeky; unfortunately, no one in the literary science fiction community - save folks like Larry Correia - has evinced any interest in drawing these people in.

Cedar Sanderson has made this point already, but I will make it as well: If Larry's "Sad Puppies" posts did anything, they gave the Hugos a shot in the arm by bringing in a ton of new blood. Poll the Correia Bloc; I suspect you'll find a lot of Hugo neophytes. And this is a good thing. It's exciting and empowering for those of us who've been disappointed with recent winners, and it will probably invigorate interest in what, up until now, has been a dying brand.

But, of course, as far as the GHH's are concerned, we're just politicizing the awards. Uh, okay. Projecting much? So far, I haven't seen Larry or Vox Day telling their readers to rank "No Award" above authors whose politics they find repellent. That's something the Special Snowflake squad has been doing ever since the shortlist was announced. We are going to read all the works on the list and judge them on their merits (even if, in the case of the Wheel of Time, it may kill us); they have openly announced their refusal to do so on many platforms, stating that if people like Brad Torgersen, Dan Wells, and Toni Weisskopf were on Larry's slate, they obviously don't deserve their nods. Have they read "The Chaplain's Legacy," Brad's nominated novella? Likely not; otherwise, they'd know it deals in part with the importance of inter-cultural dialogue. Isn't that something the left is supposed to champion?

In sum: I'm not at all sorry that we crashed your tiny and irrelevant little popularity contest, and I invite you to buck up and fight the good fight like men -- even if, like me, you are a woman.

For the Puppies!

You can vote even if you only buy a supporting membership!