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Understanding the world science fiction convention

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Re: Understanding the world science fiction convention

#51

Post by mock-possum »

defrost wrote: post #36
ooterness wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only fun thing that came out of that mess was that Chuck Tingle was nominated for a Hugo Award.

The nomination of Space Raptor Butt Invasion in 2016 was a Sad Puppy footgun. He disavowed their coordinated campaign and then engaged further: Satirical erotica author Chuck Tingle's massive troll of conservative sci-fi fans, explained Right-wing sci-fi writers tried to delegitimize the Hugo Awards by nominating a writer no one took seriously. Here's how he took them all by surprise. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/26/11…

Also people who don’t take him seriously have not been paying enough attention. Chuck Tingle is a master craftsman.

Re: Understanding the world science fiction convention

#52

Post by cstross »

jtr1 wrote: post #15
senkora wrote: post #6

I think HN may be interested in another recent instance of the Hugo awards running into difficulties because of its rules: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies TL;DR: A conservative block of voters swept the nominations for certain categories. At final voting, members voted to not give awards at all in those categories.

IIRC they swept because Hugo membership is open and they made a coordinated effort to join and sweep those categories. The idea of a coordinated anti-diversity effort pissed off a lot of people. For a few friends of mine who are lifelong sci-fi nerds, it was motivation to finally join Hugo so they could vote “no award”.

Amusingly (or enragingly) one of the effects of the Sad Puppy voting slate in 2015 was that it pushed William Patterson's magisterial and definitive biography of Robert A. Heinlein -- who the Puppies mostly adored -- off the shortlist for Best Related Word (a Hugo category usually occupied by scholarly works of SF history and criticism) in favour of utter garbage like "Wisdom From My Internet" by Michael Z. Williamson because the Sad Puppy organizers were so out of touch with events outside their bubble that they weren't aware the biography had been published.

You can take this as an illustration of the risk of an organized voting slate scoring a huge own goal.

Sad Puppy 2015 slate: https://www.scifiwright.com/2015/02/sad-puppies-3-announces-...

Patterson biography, volume 2: https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Heinlein-Dialogue-Century-1948...

Re: Understanding the world science fiction convention

#54

Post by cstross »

falcor84 wrote: post #39
PeterStuer wrote: post #38

This reads like an extremely one sided take with a myopic US west coast moralising slant. The author seems oblivious to the irony of calling something world con, then throwing a tantrum if the world does dare not to prostrate to their idiological microbubble.

You can say a lot of negative things about it, but it's most definitely not a "micro" bubble. The ideological influence of the US West Coast on the world at large during the past century has been de-facto defining much of the global culture, even if you limit it to just Hollywood and the Silicon Valley. A world that were to shrug off this influence would be, for better or worse, fundamentally different.

Not only am I not Californian, I'm not American: I'm a left-wing Scot living in Edinburgh.

Re: Understanding the world science fiction convention

#55

Post by sangnoir »

LanceH wrote: post #46
sangnoir wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say that the same low voter turnout that made sad puppies possible was being abused to prop up obscure books based on the identity of the author rather the quality of the story Which undeserving stories/authors exemplify this?

Of the winners, I've only read The Three Body Problem, which I liked for a number of reasons. I'm not familiar with any of the other winners. Which of these are monsters on par with the big winners from the 60's through 90's? There are a lot of people saying that the current trend is a backlash against sad puppies (which would also be wrong) while simultaneously denying that it was happening before sad puppies. My ex…

>> I would say that the same low voter turnout that made sad puppies possible was being abused to prop up obscure books based on the identity of the author rather the quality of the story

> Of the winners, I've only read The Three Body Problem, which I liked for a number of reasons.

I may be misunderstanding you, but if you didn't read the books, how did you judge the quality of the stories? Did you perhaps read the nominations, if so, please let me know any that you feel was not deserving and the possibly got nominated based on author's identity.

Re: Understanding the world science fiction convention

#56

Post by LanceH »

sangnoir wrote: post #55
LanceH wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the winners, I've only read The Three Body Problem, which I liked for a number of reasons. I'm not familiar with any of the other winners. Which of these are monsters on par with the big winners from the 60's through 90's? There are a lot of people saying that the current trend is a backlash against sad puppies (which would also be wrong) while simultaneously denying that it was happening before sad puppies. My ex…

>> I would say that the same low voter turnout that made sad puppies possible was being abused to prop up obscure books based on the identity of the author rather the quality of the story > Of the winners, I've only read The Three Body Problem, which I liked for a number of reasons. I may be misunderstanding you, but if you didn't read the books, how did you judge the quality of the stories? Did you perhaps read the…

> how did you judge the quality of the stories?

I haven't read them, I haven't judged them.

I'm reporting to you and anyone else who read it that while in attendance at worldcons pre-sad puppies, there was active campaigning for books based on the identity of the author. Sad puppies did not occur in a vacuum. I'm in no way justifying any stuffing the vote or any other shenanigans.

I will say that the last 10 years of winners are certainly more obscure than any 10 years from 1960-2000. Individually an obscure book may be great. As a trend it seems unlikely.

I may be missing out on something from the last 10 years. But after 40+ years of reading, why am I not getting recommendations on anything in the last 10 years (again, except for Three Body Problem)? You dodged that question also. No recommendations from the last 10 years? Why is that?

I won't read something just because it's written by a woman or minority. -- me

I won't read something if it's written by a minority. -- not me

I won't read something just because it's written by a man. -- also me

I'll read something if it is recommended. -- I may judge the recommender if it is awful

I'll read something if the story sounds interesting. -- very little emphasis of this at worlcon

Re: Understanding the world science fiction convention

#57

Post by sangnoir »

LanceH wrote: post #56
sangnoir wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I would say that the same low voter turnout that made sad puppies possible was being abused to prop up obscure books based on the identity of the author rather the quality of the story > Of the winners, I've only read The Three Body Problem, which I liked for a number of reasons. I may be misunderstanding you, but if you didn't read the books, how did you judge the quality of the stories? Did you perhaps read the…

> how did you judge the quality of the stories? I haven't read them, I haven't judged them. I'm reporting to you and anyone else who read it that while in attendance at worldcons pre-sad puppies, there was active campaigning for books based on the identity of the author. Sad puppies did not occur in a vacuum. I'm in no way justifying any stuffing the vote or any other shenanigans. I will say that the last 10 years of…

> But after 40+ years of reading, why am I not getting recommendations on anything in the last 10 years (again, except for Three Body Problem)? You dodged that question also. No recommendations from the last 10 years? Why is that?

I thought it's a rhetorical question, because on its face, comparing award-winners across decades is orthogonal to the question on whether the recent winners deserve to win, and is frankly subjective. If I accept your prior that the winning story in 20xx is not as good as the winner from 1975; that information is insufficient to support the argument that the 20xx winner didn't deserve to win. IMO, the way to prove that would be to name another book from the same year that deserved to win, but didn't. "Everything is now shit" is an indictment of the entire industry - not minority authors whose quality of work is for our purposes, is yet to be quantified (relative to the rest of the contemporary field).

To answer your question about the lack of "monsters"; I think it's a function of the number of SF authors active in a given decade (big fish in a small pond), the number of SF books published, the relative proportion consumers reading books vs competing media (some of the best SF I've experienced are games - which weren't competitive with books as a vehicle for stories until, SystemShock maybe?). People don't read books as much anymore. I am working through my list of Hugo winners, and there are some not-so-great books in there. IMO, several of Ted Chiang's are better stories than a good chunk of the winners 1960-2000.

Re: Understanding the world science fiction convention

#58

Post by KittenInABox »

LanceH wrote: post #56
sangnoir wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I would say that the same low voter turnout that made sad puppies possible was being abused to prop up obscure books based on the identity of the author rather the quality of the story > Of the winners, I've only read The Three Body Problem, which I liked for a number of reasons. I may be misunderstanding you, but if you didn't read the books, how did you judge the quality of the stories? Did you perhaps read the…

> how did you judge the quality of the stories? I haven't read them, I haven't judged them. I'm reporting to you and anyone else who read it that while in attendance at worldcons pre-sad puppies, there was active campaigning for books based on the identity of the author. Sad puppies did not occur in a vacuum. I'm in no way justifying any stuffing the vote or any other shenanigans. I will say that the last 10 years of…

>I may be missing out on something from the last 10 years. But after 40+ years of reading, why am I not getting recommendations on anything in the last 10 years (again, except for Three Body Problem)? You dodged that question also. No recommendations from the last 10 years? Why is that?

Who are you getting your recommendations from? I get constantly recommended new work. Exordia by Seth Dickinson was released less than a week ago and it's already had people recommending it to me. The people who I know who mostly recommend only classics... stopped reading!

Re: Understanding the world science fiction convention

#59

Post by microtherion »

jameshart wrote: post #32
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Châteauneuf-du-Pape That reads more like "[The] Pope's New Castle" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teauneuf-du-Pape_AOC In fact, Avignon was the site of the Apostolic See and indeed, seven canonically-accepted Popes resided there, plus two antipopes. https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/avignon This period also featured Italian antipopes! It was dramatic! https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/western-schism

It's actually a great example of how we just associate French names with 'fancy'. If you saw a bottle of an alcoholic drink for sale under the name "Pope's Newcastle" you'd be forgiven for assuming it was a down-to-earth real ale. Newcastle United's goalkeeper is called Nick Pope. Perhaps he should go by the name Pape-du-Châteauneuf.

cf also the Frank Black song "New House of the Pope" which talks about a pub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsb0PSPhcbo

Re: Understanding the world science fiction convention

#60

Post by PeterStuer »

cstross wrote: post #54
falcor84 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say a lot of negative things about it, but it's most definitely not a "micro" bubble. The ideological influence of the US West Coast on the world at large during the past century has been de-facto defining much of the global culture, even if you limit it to just Hollywood and the Silicon Valley. A world that were to shrug off this influence would be, for better or worse, fundamentally different.

Not only am I not Californian, I'm not American: I'm a left-wing Scot living in Edinburgh.

That's what I deserve for just quickly skimming an article on the trone on my phone.

I guess the gratuitous Trump trope succeeded trowing me off a more nuanced reading.

Mb.

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