Does the Hugo really represent fandom?

July 2, 2017

Lela E. Buis Artificial Intelligence, Best Short Story, Bestseller, book review, Book sales, books, Castalia House, Chinese SF, Clarkesworld, dark fantasy, diversity, fantasy, hugo awards, Hugo nominations, LGBTQ, literary awards, literary sf, magical realism, Market analysis, mundane SF, nominations, philosophy, political correctness, publishing, rabid puppies, sad puppies, science fiction, short story, slates, social inclusion, social justice, space colonization, Space Opera, Speculative fiction, Tor Books, Voting, voting no award, Vox Day, WorldCon, Writing, young adult, young adult novels Ada Palmer, Alyssa Wong, Amal El-Mohtar, Apex Magazine, Becky Chambers, Brooke Boander, Carrie Vaughn, Castalia House4Uncanny Magazine, Charlie Jane Anders, China mieville, Cixin Liu, Clarkesworld, Fran Wilde, Harper Voyager, Hugo Award, Hugo finalists, Hugo nominees, John C. Wright, Kai Ashante Wilson, Ken Liu, Kij Johnson, Lois McMaster Bujold, N. K. Jemisin, Nina Allan, Orbit Books, Seanan McBuire, Ursula Vernon, Victor LaValle, Yoon Ha Lee 122 Comments

I’ve already commented on the extreme diversity that appeared on the Nebula ballot this year. There’s also quite a bit in the Hugo ballot if you’re looking for the usual author characteristics. For example, the Hugo Best Novel category includes two trans authors, a black author, two Asian authors, two LGB authors and two disabled authors. There are no white men there. This outcome is considered progressive, but somehow I suspect there are some very popular white male writers out there. Note that the two white men who appear on the ballot as a whole are due to Vox Day’s activism. Stix Hiscock I’m not going to mention.

Here’s the Hugo ballot again:
Best Novel
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor Books / Titan Books)
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager US)
Death’s End by Cixin Liu (Tor Books / Head of Zeus)
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris Books)
The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit Books)
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (Tor Books)

Best Novella
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Tor.com Publishing)
The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson (Tor.com Publishing)
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold (Spectrum Literary Agency)
A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com Publishing)
This Census-Taker by China Miéville (Del Rey / Picador)

Best Novelette
“Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By The T-Rex” by Stix Hiscock (self-published)
“The Art of Space Travel” by Nina Allan (Tor.com, July 2016)
“The Jewel and Her Lapidary” by Fran Wilde (Tor.com Publishing, May 2016)
“The Tomato Thief” by Ursula Vernon (Apex Magazine, January 2016)
“Touring with the Alien” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld Magazine, April 2016)
“You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay” by Alyssa Wong (Uncanny Magazine, May 2016)

Best Short Story
“The City Born Great” by N. K. Jemisin (Tor.com, September 2016)
“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong (Tor.com, March 2016)
“Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander (Uncanny Magazine, November 2016)
“Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, Saga Press)
“That Game We Played During the War” by Carrie Vaughn (Tor.com, March 2016)
“An Unimaginable Light” by John C. Wright (God, Robot, Castalia House)

So, what are the chances that SFF fandom as a whole would elect this ballot? Remember that taste is never random, but with equal participation I’d expect the SFF readership demographics should roughly match the ballot for a popular award. Assuming that everyone participates, of course.

Well, it’s hard to say what the current demographics are. I’m having trouble finding any studies to consult on the matter. When I checked, the latest demographic study on SFF readership I found took place in 1977. This should be a great opportunity for research. Doesn’t the industry conduct surveys to keep track of fan demographics at all?

122 Comments (+add yours?)

Contrarius
Jul 03, 2017 @ 11:47:13

And again I have to ask — why do you insist on fixating on the particular combination of “white” plus “male”? There are male authors on the ballot, and there are white authors on the ballot. What is so special to you about that particular combination of race and gender?

And also again, you are acting as though the Hugo nominations are hugely discordant compared to the other big awards this year — but they are not. Heck, just take a look at the Locus Award winners that were recently announced:

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
— Winner: Death’s End, Cixin Liu (Tor; Head of Zeus)

FANTASY NOVEL
— Winner: All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)

FIRST NOVEL
— Winner: Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris US; Solaris UK)

NOVELLA
— Winner: Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)

NOVELETTE
— Winner: “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay,” Alyssa Wong (Uncanny 5-6/16)

SHORT STORY
— Winner: “Seasons of Glass and Iron”, Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood)

COLLECTION
— Winner: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Ken Liu (Saga; Head of Zeus)

MAGAZINE
— Winner: Tor.com

PUBLISHER
— Winner: Tor

EDITOR
— Winner: Ellen Datlow

ARTIST
— Winner: Julie Dillon

NON-FICTION
— Winner: The Geek Feminist Revolution, Kameron Hurley (Tor)

Do any of those look familiar to you from the Hugo noms?

“Remember that taste is never random, but with equal participation I’d expect the SFF readership demographics should roughly match the ballot for a popular award. ”

Why on earth would you expect any such thing?

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Jul 03, 2017 @ 22:05:37
Lela E. Buis
Jul 03, 2017 @ 22:10:04

I’m a moderate and I believe in parity. White men are 31% of the US population, give or take, depending on your definition of white. We ought to see one on the ballot now and then.

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- Contrarius
  Jul 04, 2017 @ 00:07:05
  
  LOL. That’s hysterically funny. Where was your pearl-clutching about diversity throughout all those years when the nominees were virtually nothing BUT white men? But somehow ONE year with them in the minority and you somehow seem to think it’s the end of the world? Seriously??
  
  Again — the Hugo nominations this year are in line with the other major American sff award nominations, as I’ve already shown you. Please stop trying so hard to drum up controversy and irrational Hugo-bashing.
  
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 11:43:40
    
    I complained about the diversity back in the day, too. As a moderate, I think the awards have now gone too far in excluding white men. This reduces not only diversity as you count beans, but also intellectual diversity.
    
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  - Robin
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 12:47:30
    
    > As a moderate, I think the awards have now gone too far in excluding white men
    
    *One* year with *one* category in which the nomination voters felt no work by a white man made the top six, a result we should expect occasionally given a random distribution of quality, and you’re all concerned about exclusion? Should we institute quotas to protect the endangered white man?
    
    Or, if you can’t accept a random result, perhaps you could be asking why there’s been a decline in the quality of white male SF.
    
    As for the number of non-English speaking voters, that probably goes up when the Worldcon location is in a non-English speaking country, as this year. And Cixin Liu has a huge base in China, probably dwarfing Butcher; even a small fraction of them taking an interest in the Hugos would be significant.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 12:59:47
    
    Robin, awards nominations, like publication, are never random. There are always influences that will affect the results. The interesting question is what these influences are.
    
    When Cixin Liu won the award last year, I thought the Chinese market would have affected the results, too, but folks who analyze the voting (e.g. Rocket Stack Rank, Chaos Horizon) said there was no Chinese influence. The results remain mainly the result of an English-speaking vote.
    
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  - MeMyselfI
    Feb 16, 2020 @ 04:53:13
    
    LOL
    “OMG IM A WOKE WHITE KNIGHT, WE MUST HAVE AFFIRMATIVE ACT…UM I MEAN RACIAL QUOTAS…OOPS I MEAN DIVERSITY! HERE, LETS PUT NON WHITE MALES IN EN MASSE TO SHOW HOW DIVERSE WE ARE!”
    
    you’re basically racist as hell, by trying not to be, just like the hugos.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Feb 16, 2020 @ 06:36:50
    
    I’d be happy to discuss this, but please be more specific about your complaint. Quotas are not considered an answer to diversity, but looking at demographics is still a decent measure of equality in representation.
    
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  - The Phantom
    Feb 16, 2020 @ 11:01:00
    
    Three and a half years old and still attracting screamers. Good job Lela! ~:D
    
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  - Contrarius
    Feb 16, 2020 @ 13:43:56
    
    I agree, MeMyselfI is quite the screamer. I made that post way back in 2017, but he just couldn’t resist necroposting.
    
    ;-D
    
    And no, I’m not planning to get involved on this topic here again. Too much of a waste of time. But I’m amused to see that my last comment on this thread, from back in 2017, is **still** valid:
    
    “I’ll repeat once again my initial observation about your posts, which seems all the more evident now: you’ve got everything going for you except the facts.
    
    Why do I continue to not be surprised?”
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Feb 16, 2020 @ 13:01:38
    
    Nothing like looking at what people are really doing. Actually the big winner is the blog about John Ringo. It gets several views a day.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Feb 16, 2020 @ 16:00:29
    
    Nice to know you’re still reading, C.
    
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- Ray
  Jul 04, 2017 @ 05:05:28
  
  white men on the ballot now and then? Just looking at best novel
  2016 – two nomineees
  2015 – two
  2014 – three
  2013 – two
  2012 – three
  2011 – one
  2010 – four
  2009 – five
  2008 – five
  so, on average, white men are over-represented…
  
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 09:13:59
    
    Ray, there are 0 white male finalists in the Best Novel category for 2016 and only two on the fiction ballot as a whole. I’m just wondering why a demographic that makes up 30% of the US population and 40% of the UK population didn’t end up with at least one representative in each category. If appearance was directly tied to demographic, we should expect about 1/3 of the ballot or 2 of 6 per category would be white men every year.
    
    Don’t you think it’s an interesting question? Does it signal a major shift in readership? In taste? In politics? Then when I went to look for studies on readership of SF/fantasy, I can’t find anything more recent than 1977. Surely someone should be tracking this.
    
    P.S. If we’re looking at the main English-speaking countries, white men are 37.5% of the Australian population. Canada is harder to figure because it’s bilingual, but white, English-speaking men might amount to about 40%.
    
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  - Ray
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 09:36:52
    
    Did you wonder the same thing in 2009, when all the novelist nominees were white men? (and 80% of the novelette nominees, and 80% of the novella nominees)
    Did you wonder the same thing in 2008?
    
    I don’t think it is reasonable to expect the ballot in any given year to match the demographics of the US population* – whether that’s proportion of white men, women of colour, Catholics, heterosexuals, or left-handed people. One year is a small sample.
    
    If we noticed that, over a period of ten years, some groups were under-represented, that might be interesting. We could ask if that group was under-represented in the voting population, in the population of people eligible for the award, and so on. But _one_ year is not significant.
    
    *and this is an international award, so why is the US population the measuring stick?
    
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  - Robin
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 10:30:32
    
    > If appearance was directly tied to demographic, we should expect about 1/3 of the ballot or 2 of 6 per category would be white men every year.
    
    Only as a long term average. If you roll and sum a 3 sided die 6 times every year, you will *not* get a sum of ‘2’ every time. In fact, you’d expect to not roll a ‘1’ at all about 10% of the time.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 11:41:40
    
    Ray, the US is the biggest English-speaking market. If you add in the white English speakers in the UK, Canada and Australia, then the percentage of white men remains about 30%, excluding white Hispanics. If you add in US white Hispanics, then you get about 40% white men. Or do you think a lot of non-English speakers vote in the Hugos?
    
    Robin, I agree that the statistics would be about averages. The Hugo as been affected recently by Vox Day’s activism, so it’s hard to see what the natural trend would be. Looking at the awards in general, through, I’m thinking there has been a major shift in the last few years.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 11:49:33
    
    @Lela — What Robin said. You keep clutching your pearls because ONE year of nominees has an underrepresentation of white men — but you are steadfastly ignoring the many years in which white men were severely OVERrepresented.
    
    To say anything statistically significant, you have to average many years together — not just pluck one isolated year out of context.
    
    “If Butcher’s fans had voted, clearly he would have won.”
    
    That’s errant nonsense. I’m a huge Butcher fan myself. I’ve read most of the Dresden books two or three times. Heck, I created my user name when I was active on the Butcher forums. But no, I didn’t vote for him to win the Hugo. Why? Because I know the difference between shoot-em-up action entertainment and literature with something significant to say. I am perfectly capable of enjoying both while still valuing the difference. Again, as Robin put it: I can love both candy and steak, but I know which one is more nutritious.
    
    And you still persist in trying to attack the “Worldcon membership” as though this year’s Hugo nominations are a significant departure from the other significant sff award lists this year. Of course, that is yet another false claim — I’ve already shown you the truth.
    
    The truly interesting question in your blog is this: why do you keep trying so hard to attack the Hugos? What is your personal beef with the Worldcon organization? You’ve obviously got a huge bone to pick with them. Nobody is fooled by your innocent “I’m just trying to figure out why white men are being oppressed by the evil Hugo” act.
    
    If you are seriously interested in fact-finding as opposed to Hugo-bashing, then what you should be asking is more like this: why are white men in the minority of ALL the major American sff award nominations and wins this year? Why has the award-voting fandom across the board apparently turned away from them more and more in recent years? Those answers might actually be interesting, though they might not further your personal agenda as much as you’d like.
    
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- Robin
  Jul 04, 2017 @ 06:28:25
  
  White men are a much smaller fraction of world SF readership, and Worldcon is ostensibly the *World* science fiction convention. Equally, the Hugos are ostensibly for the *best* works of the past year, not the most popular. And they are limited to works of the past year.
  
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 09:33:12
    
    Robin, people keep saying male readership has declined, but where are the studies that show it? I’m personally expecting that the readership of fantasy has greatly increased and the popularity of hard SF has declined, but it’s hard to say anything beyond that. Checking around, here are sales figures for the 2015 ballot:
    
    The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Tor), 1,800 copies.
    The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor), 1,900 copies.
    Skin Game by Jim Butcher (Roc), 94,000 copies.
    Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos (Amazon’s 47North imprint), 2,360 copies.
    Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie, (Orbit US; Orbit UK), 8,000 copies.
    
    If Butcher’s fans had voted, clearly he would have won. So, you’re thinking WorldCon members instead vote for what they think is the “best” rather than what they like to read? How do they decide what’s best? Most entertaining? Most diverse? Most progressive?
    
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  - Robin
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 10:23:26
    
    I didn’t say anything about decline. I pointed out that the Hugos are ostensibly a *world* award, not a US award, and the proportion of whites in the world is a lot lower than it is in the US.
    
    > you’re thinking WorldCon members instead vote for what they think is the “best” rather than what they like to read?
    
    False dichotomy. Also, an ungrounded assumption that Worldcon members are representative of Butcher readers; perhaps Butcher appeals to lots of people who haven’t even heard of the Hugo, especially after getting a TV show based on his books.
    
    I read several Dresden books in a row and *I* probably wouldn’t vote for them. They were fun, literary candy, not great books. Just because someone eats lots of candy, or cereal, doesn’t mean they’ll think those are the best foods.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 11:03:10
    
    It would be interesting to check the demographics of WroldCon voters, but I’d expect the majority come from English speaking countries, which mean’s it’s not actually representative of the world. It’s just a conceit to say it is. Regardless, whites make up about 20% of the world population, so white men would be about 10% of positions on the ballot.
    
    What you’re saying about Hugo voters trying to pick the best instead of what they like means I need to write another blog about this. Are you a WorldCon voter? If so, what criteria do you use to pick the best?
    
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  - Robin
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 11:11:10
    
    > trying to pick the best instead of what they like
    
    Except I never said that. You have no reason to believe that the people voting for e.g. the Three Body Problem last year didn’t like it. They may have liked Butcher too, but not as much.
    
    You can’t go from number of people who buy a book to the intensity of support by any one person for that book; that’s a simply invalid move. And especially support by Hugo voters who are more invested and have hopefully read most of the nominees. I’d guess that lots of Butcher’s readers haven’t even heard of the Hugo awards, or most of the other books on the ballot.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 11:53:28
    
    Robin, here’s what you’ve said above “Equally, the Hugos are ostensibly for the *best* works of the past year, not the most popular.” Do you think this is really about “intensity of support” instead of either conceptions of “best” or “most popular?” What do you think causes intensity of support?
    
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- Lela E. Buis
  Jul 04, 2017 @ 12:11:04
  
  Contrarius, if you look back through the series I’ve done on awards, I think I am asking why the awards have turned away from white men in general. You’re right that the Hugo’s aren’t the only awards system that has seen a reduction in the number of nominations for white men. Do you agree with Vox Day that this change is about politics?
  
  Discussion of the Hugos is timely right now. They’re generally described as a “popularity” award, but Robin thinks it’s about intensity of support. Why are some works supported for the awards more than others? What makes them seem important, for example, in a given year?
  
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 13:08:32
    
    “Contrarius, if you look back through the series I’ve done on awards, I think I am asking why the awards have turned away from white men in general.”
    
    Nonsense. Just look at your title for this blog post — “Does the HUGO Really Represent Fandom?” Your true goal is obvious — to slam the Hugo for some imagined sin or other.
    
    Yes, the Hugo really does represent **voting** fandom — as proven by the similarities between its nomination list and the noms and winners of the other major awards this year. Again, if you were truly looking for facts as opposed to attacks, your blog would be titled something more like: Does Award-Voting Fandom Really Represent Fandom As a Whole?
    
    And to that question, I’d answer — probably not. After all, award-voting fandom is almost by definition more dedicated to the field, more educated about the field, and more widely read in the field than fandom as a whole.
    
    “You’re right that the Hugo’s aren’t the only awards system that has seen a reduction in the number of nominations for white men. Do you agree with Vox Day that this is about politics?”
    
    Yes, but not in the way VD intends it. In large part, I think it’s “about politics” in that women and minorities are now being accepted on more of an equal footing than in years past — they are competing on a more even playing field than previously, both in terms of getting published and in terms of getting read and taken seriously after publication. What VD hates and fears as supposed minority favoritism is more an issue of the disappearance of a good portion of that white male privilege he has been so comfortable with. Further, sff has **always** included and awarded a lot of political content — whether that meant civil rights or communism or nuclear war — whatever issues were roiling throughout our society at the time were reflected in sff awards and nominations. Right now, those issues happen to be focusing on both racial and sexual minorities. When communism was the biggest concern, we saw anti-communist authors being popular; now that minority civil rights is a huge concern, we see anti-discrimination authors being popoular. Nobody should be surprised by that.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 15:26:10
    
    Contrarius, when you say **voting** fandom, are you suggesting the same group of fans controls all the major US based awards? That would certainly explain why Chaos Horizon finds high positive correlation between the results. It would also explain why different awards systems, like the Clarke for example, often have an entirely different shortlist.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 16:20:13
    
    @Lela —
    
    “Contrarius, when you say **voting** fandom, are you suggesting the same group of fans controls all the major US based awards?”
    
    Oy vey. No, of course I never said any such thing. Please stop trying so hard to misrepresent what people are saying.
    
    “Voting fandom” means the fans that vote for the Hugos, PLUS the fans that vote for the Nebulas (yes, writers are fans too), PLUS the fans that vote for the Locus, and so on down the line. There is overlap between each group, but the groups are not entirely coherent. Think Venn diagrams.
    
    “That would certainly explain why Chaos Horizon finds high positive correlation between the results.”
    
    LOL.
    
    There is high positive correlation between the results because — guess what — voting fandom (those fans who are dedicated enough to vote for awards) really do believe that these books are the best published in this particular year.
    
    Wow, what a concept!
    
    “It would also explain why different awards systems, like the Clarke for example, often have an entirely different shortlist.”
    
    Ummm. In case you didn’t notice, here’s the shortlist for this year’s Clarkes:
    
    A Closed and Common Orbit – Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton)
    Ninefox Gambit – Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)
    After Atlas – Emma Newman (Roc)
    Occupy Me – Tricia Sullivan (Gollancz)
    Central Station – Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)
    The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead (Fleet)
    
    Any of those look familiar to you? And yeah, not a single conservative-Christian-“white man” there either (Lavie is an Israeli Jew who grew up in a kibbutz — the horror!).
    
    Oops.
    
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Ryan
Jul 04, 2017 @ 07:14:51

Lela, are you saying that as a white man, I should, statistically, tend to vote for white men in a popular sci-fi award?

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- Lela E. Buis
  Jul 04, 2017 @ 10:53:59
  
  I’m expecting that white men share certain characteristics that would affect their taste, and that this would show up in the white male vote. Maybe that’s not so. Do you find you enjoy works written by women more than works written by men?
  
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  - Ryan
    Jul 04, 2017 @ 12:37:37
    
    Honestly, I have no idea. I can say my favorite sci-fi/fantasy author is a dead male Scot. Second favorite is a woman who felt the need to not make her gender obvious to her readers (C. S. Friedman). But recently I’ve loved Anne Leckie, Kameron Hurley, and N. K. Jamison. But also Yoon Ha Lee and Ted Chaing and Ken Liu, non-white males, obviously.
    
    For what it’s worth, I enjoyed John C. Wright’s Awake in the Nightland, but besides the first Golden Age book, the rest of his stuff is unreadable.
    
    When you aren’t hung up on identity politics, life’s a lot better.
    
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Kathodus
Jul 04, 2017 @ 13:23:02

I don’t know why people should be expected to vote based on some demographic tribal lines. It makes sense to me that, after years of white men’s perspectives being extremely well represented, people would be interested in different perspectives. Also, there have been more than a few campaigns in the past few years to boost female and non-white authors in the public eye. I’m sure that accounts for some additional votes. Additionally, the Hugo Awards tend to reflect current trends within the SFF that WSFS members read. I see a few of those trends reflected in the Hugo nominees this year. I have varying amounts of interest in them, from excited to “seriously, this again?” (at least one of them has hopefully reached peak popularity and will die down soon), and I’m sure the same can be said for everyone else who reads SFF, as well.

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- Lela E. Buis
  Jul 04, 2017 @ 15:34:49
  
  Kathodus, if you read back through my reviews, I’m sure you’ll see I’ve got a similar reaction. If you’re looking for “the best” and not just trendy social/political message fiction, then there’s quite a mixture of strong/weak candidates on the ballot this year. I’m part way through Liu’s Death’s End and thinking it ought to blow everybody away again.
  
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Kevin Harkness
Jul 05, 2017 @ 19:29:56

“I’m expecting that white men share certain characteristics that would affect their taste, and that this would show up in the white male vote.”

As a white man, I share certain characteristics with other white men, notably a tendency to sunburn. Should I avoid stories with sunny days? Luckily, I live in Vancouver, and the sun makes very few appearances in our literature or our skies. (Note: due to several clear days in a row, I am writing this from a bunker.)

Come on, Lela. Are you saying that the ‘white’ part of my reading brain should trump any learned knowledge concerning quality, morality, theme, etc.? Can something as complex as reading taste be reduced to a single colour, and damn life experience? Hand me the SPF 1000, but please don’t lather such expectations onto my TBR pile.

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- Lela E. Buis
  Jul 06, 2017 @ 23:27:39
  
  Kevin, I think being a white man is an issue of culture and background. These things program us to like certain things. What element of the storytelling art do you think you and a cattle herder in Argentina or a farmer in Africa enjoy in common?
  
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 00:03:51
    
    @Lela —
    
    “Kevin, I think being a white man is an issue of culture and background. These things program us to like certain things. What element of the storytelling art do you think you and a cattle herder in Argentina or a farmer in Africa enjoy in common?”
    
    That’s seriously what you’re going with?
    
    So, according to your argument, I should only like books written by someone with my own background? I shouldn’t like to read Doris Lessing, because she was born in Iran and raised in Rhodesia, where her father was a farmer? I shouldn’t like reading Lavie Tidhar because he was raised on an Israeli kibbutz?
    
    Seriously — just how xenophobic can you get?
    
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  - Kevin Harkness
    Jul 08, 2017 @ 20:27:31
    
    Well, I love stories of redemption, is that from being white or from my particular psychology? I also like long plot arcs like in the Mahabharata; satire, like Journey to the West; and magic realism, like Kafka on the Shore. Lela, I am more than the sum of my melanin, I hope.
    
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thephantom182
Jul 05, 2017 @ 22:29:43

“Does the Hugo really represent fandom?”

Clearly that answer to that particular question is “no, not even slightly,” as the voters of Worldcon made abundantly clear in 2015. This year, 2017, they have even stopped pretending they represent anything outside their clique, by changing the voting rules.

As well, we have the evidence of the commenters here on your post. None of them have any interest in Fandom or representing it at all. Their interests are clearly political. Their outrage that you -dared- mention “white males” as a group worthy of inclusion is both proof and entertainment at the same time.

The Hugos have not represented -my- personal fan choices in a very long time indeed. Probably since the early 1980s in large part. Since the 1990s I’ve used it as a “do not read” list.

There is one other thing to take exception to, this notion of the Hugos representing the “best.” That is their excuse for voting in “important” works and “under represented” authors with four-digit sales.

This spurious claim can be rejected again this year with one nomination: Ghost Busters. That turkey did not get nominated because it was the “best” SF/F film, in anyone’s mind.

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- Contrarius
  Jul 05, 2017 @ 22:38:09
  
  @thephantom182 — You have everything except the facts on your side.
  
  As I’ve already pointed out, the Hugo nominations are in line with every other major American sff award this year so far. You may well argue that NONE of the major sff awards are representative of sff fandom — although you have not presented any actual evidence to back up that claim — but trying to single out the Hugos for your opprobrium is contradicted by facts that have already been made available to you.
  
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 06, 2017 @ 09:09:42
    
    “As I’ve already pointed out, the Hugo nominations are in line with every other major American sff award this year so far.”
    
    Irrelevant goal-post moving. This discussion regards the Hugos. The Hugos voters have gone to great lengths to demonstrate there is an entire section of fandom that they do not represent.
    
    “…although you have not presented any actual evidence to back up that claim…”
    
    Changing the voting rules to exclude Sad Puppies is not evidence? How about five No Awards and wooden assterisks in 2015?
    
    The behavior of Worldcon voters is historical record now. You can continue to pretend that all authors and all fans are treated equally, but the pretense is getting very obvious at this point. Voting is political at Worldcon. How else to explain Ghost Busters?
    
    Add to this the incessant braying about how many non-White non-Male authors are nominated every year at the Usual Suspects blogs, not to mention the continued over-representation of TOR in the nominations. We can see you talking out there you know.
    
    There is one large section of Fandom that WorldCon does not represent, and they are very vocal about their determination to exclude that group. To suggest otherwise is simply untrue.
    
    Now, if you want to expand the frame to include SF fandom and awards in general, it makes your argument look even worse. Lela’s original point that with ~31% of the voters being male and white, one would expect a larger percentage of male and white authors would be nominated, based on presumed similarity of taste.
    
    I think the thing to look at is the pool of authors available to be nominated. Male and white is a large percentage (as WorldCon types never fail to tell us.) One would expect the nominations to somewhat resemble the population of authors, absent a concerted and very public effort to nominate non-male, non-white authors. When you start seeing a whole awards season with no white-male authors, even though they are the majority by a wide margin, then you must assume there is a bias in the nominations. That is simple arithmetic.
    
    If you want to talk about “best work” over any other characteristic, then gender and ethnicity are not an issue and the subject should never come up. The reader can’t tell who wrote the book, and it doesn’t matter to the story.
    
    If gender and ethnicity/religion/orientation/shoe size are going to be considered in nominations for an award, at all, then the award is no longer about “best work.” It is no longer about the work at all.
    
    Nor is it about representing the taste of fans in general, and never has been. The taste of fans in general is amply demonstrated by sales figures. As Lela shows above, Hugo nominees are not selling. Top selling authors are rarely nominated.
    
    If you want to expand the frame some more, there is an argument to be made that the industry as a whole does not reflect Fandom.
    
    Sales figures among the Traditional publishers are in decline. The overall number of authors is in sharp decline. That phenomenon is so well known it has a name: the death of the mid-list.
    
    Entire protest groups have sprung up among fans to object that publishers are not printing what they want to read, and awards are not given to what they like. That generally does not happen when fans are busy reading books they like.
    
    While the trad-pub numbers decline, independent authors are selling nicely on ebook platforms like Amazon. Plenty of people are selling more than 5000 copies of their books, as a quick google will reveal.
    
    To date, no indy author has gotten a nomination to a major award that I am aware of. This despite the already large number of indy authors and immense volume of new work being produced, and despite the ever-increasing sales of that work.
    
    Awards are political. As is publishing.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 06, 2017 @ 10:27:38
    
    @thephantom182 —
    
    As shown in the following, you’re just rehashing — and rehashing, and rehashing — claims that have already failed multiple times in the thread above.
    
    “Irrelevant goal-post moving.”
    
    Not at all. You and Lela are trying hard to continue a false narrative that the Hugos **in particular** are corrupted by politics. Just look at the title line on this blog entry. I’m simply pointing out the falseness of your constructed narrative.
    
    “The Hugos voters have gone to great lengths to demonstrate there is an entire section of fandom that they do not represent.”
    
    Again — nonsense. Again — the Hugos voters have not shown any sign of reacting any differently to “an entire section of fandom” than any of the other major American sff awards this year. Your false narrative simply doesn’t wash.
    
    “Changing the voting rules to exclude Sad Puppies is not evidence? How about five No Awards and wooden assterisks in 2015?”
    
    The rules did not exclude Sad Puppies at all. Sad Puppies are more than welcome to vote in the Hugos. What they are NOT welcome to do is to game the system by essentially stuffing the ballot box. Remember that the amended rules punish ALL slate voting, regardless of its goal or political leanings. And if you don’t like to see No Awards, then please stop nominating joke and self-promoting entries.
    
    “How else to explain Ghost Busters?”
    
    That’s hysterical coming from a person who apparently supported the nomination of “Boned from Behind by the T-Rex”.
    
    There are lots of Hugo nominations I haven’t agreed with over the years. Like, say, The PIrates of Ersatz (1960). Or, this year, All the Birds in the Sky. But, hey — I’m not the only one who gets a vote here, and I don’t try to tear down the whole system just because I don’t always agree with the outcomes. As long as everybody plays fair, everybody gets to play.
    
    “Add to this the incessant braying about how many non-White non-Male authors are nominated every year at the Usual Suspects blogs,”
    
    And again — as I’ve already pointed out — you can see the same in all the major US awards this year. Even in the Clarkes (non-US). This is nothing that the Hugos can logically be separated out for.
    
    “There is one large section of Fandom that WorldCon does not represent, and they are very vocal about their determination to exclude that group. To suggest otherwise is simply untrue.”
    
    Yet again — it is ALL the major US awards that are, according to your criteria, “not representing” that section of fandom. The Hugos are not acting any differently than those others.
    
    “Lela’s original point that with ~31% of the voters being male and white, one would expect a larger percentage of male and white authors would be nominated, based on presumed similarity of taste.”
    
    Her so-called “point” is ridiculous. It assumes that white people vote for white people, and black people would vote for black people, and so on. Now THAT would be the height of racial, gender, and political-line voting.
    
    “When you start seeing a whole awards season with no white-male authors, even though they are the majority by a wide margin, then you must assume there is a bias in the nominations. That is simple arithmetic.”
    
    Yeah, no.
    
    First — yet again — all the major awards have shown the same pattern this year. That should tell you something very significant — namely, that the ENTIRE voting fandom, not just the Hugo voters, feel the same way.
    
    Second — you are assuming that this supposed “bias” has little to do with literary quality, which is not at all in evidence. This is in itself very telling: you are assuming that non-white/non-male authors could not have written the best books of the year. Your prejudice is showing.
    
    Third — you are forgetting all the years with ONLY white male nominees. Did you rant and rail about bias during all those years?
    
    Fourth — Again, as mentioned before, you are hyperventilating about ONE year’s nominations, even though it’s impossible to make statistically significant claims without examining multiple years. From the numbers Ray has already posted, counting the years 2017-2013 (the last five years), 35% of the nominees have been white males — actually higher than Lela would predict (31%) from their percentage of the population. And in the five years prior to that (2012-2008), that jumped to 72% — a huge OVER representation of white males.
    — Again, as I mentioned before: what you (and VD) are objecting to is actually a balancing of the playing field, a loss of that white-male privilege, rather than an actual oppression of white-male opportunity.
    
    “If you want to talk about “best work” over any other characteristic, then gender and ethnicity are not an issue and the subject should never come up. The reader can’t tell who wrote the book, and it doesn’t matter to the story.”
    
    Yet again, as I’ve already pointed out — current issues are ALWAYS an element of awards. When communism was a huge concern, anti-communist stories tended to be nominated for awards. When nuclear war was a huge concern, stories about nuclear war tended to be nominated. And so on. This is nothing new.
    
    “The taste of fans in general is amply demonstrated by sales figures.”
    
    Yet again, as I’ve already pointed out — we can love both candy and steak but still know which one is more nutritious.
    
    The Pulitzer Prize is not determined by sales figures, the National Book Award is not determined by sales figures, and neither are sff awards.
    
    “Entire protest groups have sprung up among fans to object that publishers are not printing what they want to read, and awards are not given to what they like.”
    
    And these are valid concerns to protest about. I forget whether I’ve said it in this particular thread, but I’ve said it elsewhere: the problem with the Sad and Rabid pups was not that they had complaints, and it was not the subject of their complaints: the problem with the pups was the way the went about trying to get their opinions enforced.
    
    Now, do you actually have anything new to bring to the table, or are you just going to rehash yet more claims that have already been thoroughly debunked?
    
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 06, 2017 @ 13:23:28
    
    @Phantom “Changing the voting rules to exclude Sad Puppies is not evidence?”
    
    I disagree with your assessment that the Sad Puppies are all about slates. Yes, in the beginning they used slates to game the Hugo nomination system using a known flaw, but in the last active Puppy year, they did not create a slate – they transparently created a recommendation list using user input, without the previous years’ focus of gaming their friends and political allies onto the ballot. And several of the recommended works made it to the ballot and were not No Rewarded.
    
    The voting change does not directly target anyone, it just ameliorates the power of slates. This is something Puppies of all shades and fur patterns should appreciate, as it has the same effect on the super sekrit Tor cabal, the Feminazi cabal, the Jewish cabal, the Homosexual Rainbow cabal… all slates are affected equally under the new system. The only way Puppies or any of the secret groups could game their way into more than 20% of the slots would be to have something like a majority of the votes, and that’s how the system is supposed to work, anyway.
    
    If the Tor cabal wasn’t a top sekrit kinda thing, but was rather a published slate like the Puppy slates of previous years, this is most likely the same system that would have been adopted to stop them. Unfortunately, the Tor cabal manages to be that rare conspiracy that stays hidden even with more than 3 members. It’s like it doesn’t exist at all (spooky).
    
    I find it strange that you didn’t know this already, but now you do.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 06, 2017 @ 13:39:16
    
    @Kathodus —
    
    “The voting change does not directly target anyone, it just ameliorates the power of slates. This is something Puppies of all shades and fur patterns should appreciate, as it has the same effect on the super sekrit Tor cabal, the Feminazi cabal, the Jewish cabal, the Homosexual Rainbow cabal… all slates are affected equally under the new system.”
    
    So much this.
    
    If Tor books were only winning because of a Super Sekrit cabal, then why did they get so many nominations this year — AFTER the new voting rules were put in place? If Tor books were only winning because of a Super Sekrit cabal, then why did they do so well in the Locus awards this year?
    
    All the pups really need to study Occam’s Razor. If Tor books tend to win awards, the simplest explanation is that Tor is publishing the books that voting fandom values most highly. And the same applies to those other Super Sekrit Cabals. You can dream up wild conspiracy theories, or you can go with Occam. Your choice.
    
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thephantom182
Jul 06, 2017 @ 14:30:06

Contrarius said: “Not at all. You and Lela are trying hard to continue a false narrative that the Hugos **in particular** are corrupted by politics.”

You have a reading disability, don’t you. Her point is very well made above. -I- said it was politics, and I supported my argument with observable historical events that anyone can go look up for themselves. You tried to bring in all sorts of other things, and I re-directed you to the point.

“As shown in the following, you’re just rehashing — and rehashing, and rehashing — claims that have already failed multiple times in the thread above.”

Failed? No, I don’t think so. Gone against your canned responses? I’d agree with that. I’ve seen this farce played out point by point for three years now. Everybody knows what happened, you calling it a “false narrative” is becomming a bit pathetic by now.

“Again — nonsense. Again — the Hugos voters have not shown any sign of reacting any differently to “an entire section of fandom” than any of the other major American sff awards this year. Your false narrative simply doesn’t wash.”

Sure it does. Five No Awards the same year, with wild applause for each one. You could wash your car with that. We all saw you cheering. You can’t pretend you didn’t.

And so forth.

The problem, as I see it, is that most people simply don’t care even a tiny little bit about the race/gender/whatever of the author of that book they like. I certainly don’t. There are a very vocal few who profess to care about such things, that would be you and your bros.

You loudly, actively and incessantly lean on the scale, and attempt to make awards all about race/gender/whatever all the time. You loudly object when anyone says “hey, what about white males? Don’t they get to play on this supposedly level playing field of yours?”

You are using obscure literary awards to pursue your political agenda. Which is fine, its a free country.

But then you -lie- about it, and try to pretend there’s something bad/evil/wrong with me and our illustrious blog-ess Lela when we mention it.

So today, you and your fellows are reduced to pretending that there’s no White Men in the awards this year because -all- the White Men books sucked this year. Which is a damn fool of a thing to be pretending.

I’d be curious to know how you think race/gender/etc. adds or reduces value in a printed work of fiction. Five bucks says none of you could discern anything at all about the author if their name and picture were not on the book.

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Contrarius
Jul 06, 2017 @ 17:35:02

@thephantom182 —

“Her point is very well made above. -I- said it was politics, and I supported my argument with observable historical events that anyone can go look up for themselves. You tried to bring in all sorts of other things, and I re-directed you to the point.”

Yeah, no.

For some reason, you guys have a hate-on for the Hugos. You keep trying to paint the Worldcon organization as the source of all voting ills — while steadfastly ignoring the fact that the rest of voting fandom has been voting in the same way as the Worldcon members have. That’s kind of like saying “I hate Fords. Ford cars cause air pollution and use up our gas reserves. I know, let’s abolish Ford cars!” while blithely ignoring all the other cars on the planet. In other words, it’s a silly crusade to embark on.

“Failed? No, I don’t think so.”

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, Hugo voters will keep awarding the sff they like. We’ve been doing that since before the pups existed, and we’re still doing it now that the pups are fading away. In the Big Picture, the pups are barely a blip on the radar.

“Five No Awards the same year, with wild applause for each one. You could wash your car with that. We all saw you cheering. You can’t pretend you didn’t.”

Why would I pretend that I didn’t? Of course I cheered. The No Award option was created many years ago to be used when a voter believed that a nominated work did not deserve to win an award. That option worked exactly as intended. Cheers all around, thanks. It’s no use you guys complaining about how WorldCon was supposedly evil for thwarting your block-voting-award-highjacking scheme — the Hugo system was simply more robust and resilient than you expected. Too bad for you.

“The problem, as I see it, is that most people simply don’t care even a tiny little bit about the race/gender/whatever of the author of that book they like.”

So what? Vote what you like. If you don’t like those books, vote for something else. You have every right to do that. Nobody is trying to stop you. The ONLY thing Worldcon has moved to stop is attempts to game the system by stuffing the ballot boxes with block votes.

“You loudly, actively and incessantly lean on the scale”

LOL.

Everyone is allowed to advertise what they like. That’s called “free speech”. If you like something else, feel free to advertise that instead. You have no right to complain if the majority of voters fail to fall at your feet to worship your opinion.

“and attempt to make awards all about race/gender/whatever all the time.”

That’s ridiculous.

You know what I put at the top of my Hugo ballot last year? Seveneves. IIRC, that was VD’s own nominee, wasn’t it? Oh, the horror!

Please, try to get over yourself. Yet again your prejudice is showing.

“You loudly object when anyone says “hey, what about white males? Don’t they get to play on this supposedly level playing field of yours?””

LOL.

Yet again — look at the averages. In the last five years, 35% of nominees have been white males — in line with those population numbers Lela posted. In the five years before that, it was over 70%. Where were all your complaints saying “Hey, what about the non-white/non-males? Don’t they get to play?” Hmmmmm? Somehow, I would be surprised if you complained at all.

“You are using obscure literary awards to pursue your political agenda.”

LOL.

The Locus awards are far from obscure. And Lela is the one who brought up the Clarke awards, not me. Unfortunately for her, they actually disproved the point she was trying to make.

“But then you -lie- about it, and try to pretend there’s something bad/evil/wrong with me and our illustrious blog-ess Lela when we mention it.”

Excuse me? Please point out any false statement I’ve made. Be specific.

I’ll be waiting.

“Five bucks says none of you could discern anything at all about the author if their name and picture were not on the book.”

Exactly. And most of the time I don’t know or care what the author’s race, nationality, or sexual orientation or identity are. I do almost all my sff “reading” in audio format, so I don’t even see pictures of the authors. This also means that I usually don’t know who published the books until long after the fact (for instance, if you look at the Audible page for All the Birds in the Sky, it says the publisher is Recorded Books — not Tor). In fact, I didn’t even know that **two** of this year’s nominees were trans until Lela herself pointed it out (I knew one was, not the other). Yet I voted to nominate those books anyway, BECAUSE I THOUGHT THE BOOKS DESERVED IT.

Hmmm. What a concept.

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thephantom182
Jul 06, 2017 @ 19:47:19

“For some reason, you guys have a hate-on for the Hugos.”

Dude: Wooden. Assterisks.

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- Contrarius
  Jul 06, 2017 @ 22:25:09
  
  Dude. Boned from Behind by the T-Rex.
  
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 11:55:07
    
    You are amazing! Way to make my argument for me.
    
    Seriously, which came first? When you honor people’s participation with booing, wooden arseholes and THREE YEARS of non-stop internet freak-out, should you be surprised when they start screwing with your voting system deliberately?
    
    I also love how you meet the claim that the Hugos are 100% political by going straight to the KKK accusation. Because there’s nothing political about that, right?
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 12:36:32
    
    @thephantom182 —
    
    “Seriously, which came first?”
    
    How quickly they forget.
    
    Castalia House came first. You’re welcome.
    
    The multiple nominations of Castalia House products and hangers-on quite clearly illustrated that the pups were much more interested in self-promotion and trolling the awards than in nominating worthy literature. Thus the No Awards.
    
    “I also love how you meet the claim that the Hugos are 100% political by going straight to the KKK accusation. Because there’s nothing political about that, right?”
    
    Of course, I never did any such thing. Lela made the silly claim that whites supposedly tend to not form tribes. I simply pointed out a few of the more obvious tribal groups that whites, in reality, quite frequently do form.
    
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Lela E. Buis
Jul 07, 2017 @ 00:35:14

Thanks for the discussion, guys. I have some comments to add:

1) Locus is one of the gatekeepers for the awards, so it’s no surprise there’s a correspondence between the Locus awards and others. Locus, for example, does not accept books from independent authors for review, which means these authors are unlikely to be recognized as notable or to appear on the influential Locus reading list.

2) I see emphasis in the comments on “voting” fans versus others, who presumably don’t vote. Because of their still large representation in the SFF community, white men could certainly do better in the awards contests if they did participate and supported their own. The comments above also point out the usual tendency of whites not to form a tribal group. Because white men aren’t organized, they don’t support their own very well. (Cue Vox Day with a novel idea.)

3) It’s quite possible the lack of representation for white men in the Hugo awards this year may have to do with a backlash against Puppy activism. This is one of the indicators that the awards are now heavily politicized. Another is the type of message fiction that’s appearing.

4) I agree that you can’t expect percentage of the population to result in the same percentage of the awards nominations. Apportioning things like that is a quota system (see Nebulas?). You can’t talk about the probability of no men in the finalist list being a random occurrence, either, because awards are never random. However, reasonable data on the voting members of the WorldCon and the readership/membership in the SFF community would allow for correlation studies. That would reveal influences on the awards.

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- Contrarius
  Jul 07, 2017 @ 00:50:20
  
  “Because of their still large representation in the SFF community, white men could certainly do better in the awards contests if they did participate and supported their own. ”
  
  Wow. For someone who keeps insisting that awards should NOT be about characteristics like race and sex, you sure are working hard to try to MAKE them be about race and sex.
  
  “The comments above also point out the usual tendency of whites not to form a tribal group.”
  
  LOL. You’re kidding, right?
  
  KKK ring any bells? Neo-Nazis? Alt-Right in general? Southern Baptists? Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy? Lions Club? Rotary Club? I could go on, but I hope you’ve already gotten the picture.
  
  “It’s quite possible the lack of representation for white men in the Hugo awards this year may have to do with a backlash against Puppy activism. This is one of the indicators that the awards are now heavily politicized.”
  
  Occam’s Razor, Lela. You guys keep ignoring it. And, again, your prejudice is showing. You keep assuming that women and minorities couldn’t possibly have written the best books this year — even though allllllll the major sff awards, NOT just the Hugos, are showing you the same general pattern.
  
  But of course ALL of them must be wrong, because they don’t conform to your carefully scripted ideology.
  
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 01:12:22
    
    Actually, I’ve rated some of the Hugo finalists as only average–though of course that’s my taste showing. If could hazard a guess, I think Best Novel ought to go to Cixin Liu again. How many people in the US actually dare to write hard SF?
    
    About white men, that seems to be what people have picked up about the Hugos from the blog. Should I have pretended not to notice?
    
    I’m actually troubled by the pattern in the awards system. There should be more diversity. Doesn’t it bother you?
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 02:09:22
    
    @Lela —
    
    “Actually, I’ve rated some of the Hugo finalists as only average–though of course that’s my taste showing.”
    
    I have no idea what this comment has to do with my previous post. I don’t like a couple of the nominations myself — so what? I’m not the only person who gets a vote.
    
    “If could hazard a guess, I think Best Novel ought to go to Cixin Liu again. How many people in the US actually dare to write hard SF?”
    
    Writing hard sf does not mean he deserves the award. I personally find his writing incredibly tedious.
    
    “About white men, that seems to be what people have picked up about the Hugos from the blog. Should I have pretended not to notice?”
    
    Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about here. What is it that you’ve “picked up about the Hugos from the blog”? And which blog?
    
    “I’m actually troubled by the pattern in the awards system. There should be more diversity. Doesn’t it bother you?”
    
    Yet again, you’re clutching your pearls about ONE year with no white men. One year means nothing in the grand scheme of things. And remember, the absence of white men is not at all the same thing as an absence of diversity. There is PLENTY of diversity in these noms.
    
    And since you keep ignoring the numbers, here they are again: In the last five years, 35% of nominees have been white males — in line with the population numbers you yourself posted earlier. In the five years before that, it was over 70%. Where were your complaints about lack of diversity then?
    
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Lela E. Buis
Jul 07, 2017 @ 02:27:33

I don’t think you’ve understood what I meant. When an organization proposes certain books as the “best” then I would expect these to have elements that raise them above other candidates. I shouldn’t be pointing out things like errors, poor writing skills and tired themes in the reviews.

I didn’t pick up anything from the blog. I picked up the fact there were no white men other than those backed by Vox Day by looking through the Hugo ballot.

If you’ll look back through my recent blog posts, you’ll notice this is a series about awards, not just a single post about the Hugos. The fact that the Locus, Nebula and Hugo awards all promote very similar slates indicates a lack of diversity in the awards system.

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- Contrarius
  Jul 07, 2017 @ 12:05:54
  
  @Lela —
  
  “When an organization proposes certain books as the “best” then I would expect these to have elements that raise them above other candidates. I shouldn’t be pointing out things like errors, poor writing skills and tired themes in the reviews.”
  
  First — It isn’t “the organization” proposing any books. It’s the VOTERS. Everybody gets one vote. You don’t have to agree with them — I don’t have to agree with them either. That’s how voting works.
  
  Second — “I shouldn’t be pointing out things like errors…”. Why not? Just look at the example of The Underground Railroad. It won the Pulitzer AND the National Book Award this year — but I panned it in my own review. Well, “panned” may be too strong a word: I gave it three stars and pointed out several problems with it. But am I complaining and accusing these awards of being “fixed” or run by some sort of Super Sekrit Cabal? No, of course not.
  
  The thing you guys don’t seem to understand is that other people’s opinions are just as valuable as your own. In this case I didn’t much like the book, but lots of other people did. They saw things in the book that I didn’t. And you know what? That’s how life works!
  
  “The fact that the Locus, Nebula and Hugo awards all promote very similar slates indicates a lack of diversity in the awards system.”
  
  Yeah, no. Not in the way you usually apply the word “diversity”, at least.
  
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 12:13:37
    
    “Everybody gets one vote.”
    
    Not anymore. Now, some votes are more equal than others.
    
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 12:18:40
    
    I take it you’re not going to address the fact that EPH lessens the power of slates, regardless who is doing the slating? That you’d rather continue dishonestly pretending it somehow targets the Puppy groups?
    
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  - Robin
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 12:38:43
    
    “some votes are more equal than others”
    
    Completely false.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 12:40:25
    
    @thephantom182 —
    
    “Not anymore. Now, some votes are more equal than others.”
    
    Those poor, oppressed ballot-box stuffers. I feel so sorry for them.
    
    Really and truly.
    
    What Kathodus said. The new rules punish ALL slate voting, no matter their origin. Leftist slates would get punished the very same as rightist slates. It’s quite telling that you continue believing that the rightists are the only ones who would be damaged. Perhaps they’re the only ones who are actually trying to game the system?
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 14:42:32
    
    You guys, who?
    
    Are you mistaking me for a Puppy? An alt-rightist? I’m actually a moderate and an independent, and trying to look at the awards system critically with this series. I’m glad it’s provoked a bit of discussion. Clearly, this is something that’s important to the SFF community.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 14:51:10
    
    @Lela —
    
    “You guys, who?”
    
    In this case, “you guys” loosely meant “those folks who keep complaining that they don’t like some of the books on the Hugo ballot and therefore draw the conclusion that the Hugos must be rigged/biased/controlled by a Super Sekrit Cabal/not actually rewarding good books/not representing ‘fandom’.”
    
    “I’m actually a moderate”
    
    You can say that as many times as you like, but that will never make it true. I applaud your ongoing civility in contentious discussions, but I see little sign of moderation or independence in your expressed political views.
    
    A quick benchmark test: how many Democrats have you voted for in statewide or nationwide elections in the last five years? (I’ve voted for two Republicans in that time period, in case you’re wondering.)
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 15:01:40
    
    Contrarius,
    
    Um, I lean liberal. I worked on the Obama campaign.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 15:37:35
    
    @Lela —
    
    “I worked on the Obama campaign.”
    
    I worked on the John Anderson campaign (yes, I’m old!), but that doesn’t make me a libertarian. 😉
    
    Nonetheless, I’m impressed. Count me in as giving you a little more benefit of the doubt in the future.
    
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thephantom182
Jul 07, 2017 @ 13:34:45

Kathodus said: “I take it you’re not going to address the fact that EPH lessens the power of slates, regardless who is doing the slating?”

It doesn’t though. Vox Day got his insults on the ballot quite handily, as Contrarius pointed out. What it does is lessen the impact of small groups.

Example, this year SJWs form the majority. This year, as a result of guys like Contrarius and Kathodus expressing their collective disdain for ‘male and white’ combination, the “Majority Slate” is all nominations of SJW-approved works.

EPH is a fraud because it increases the power of the majority. If SJWs were trying to break in, you would all be dead set against EPH. But because you are the majority, you love it. It keeps out those mangy Sad Puppies.

Which, to everyone’s great shock and surprise, brings us back to Lela’s original point.

“Does the Hugo represent Fandom?” No. It does not. The Hugo deliberately and explicitly arranged the voting structure to exclude the influence of small groups, and they did it to exclude fans with different -political- views. The Hugo represents SJWs, Conservatives and Libertarians need not apply.

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- Contrarius
  Jul 07, 2017 @ 14:03:08
  
  @thephantom182 —
  
  “It doesn’t though.”
  
  Sure it does. See below.
  
  “Vox Day got his insults on the ballot quite handily”
  
  Actually, this year only half of his nominees made it to the ballot — and at least three of those would likely have been there without him. And he has no more than one nominee in each category, with something like seven categories being completely Vox-free. Those are great improvements over previous years.
  
  “This year, as a result of guys like Contrarius and Kathodus expressing their collective disdain for ‘male and white’ combination, the “Majority Slate” is all nominations of SJW-approved works.”
  
  Yeah, ’cause we have SOOOOO much influence over the Locus Awards, the Nebula Awards, the Clarke Awards…… We’re worldwide!
  
  And please, get over this spurious “disdain” nonsense. As I’ve already told you, last year a white male author was at the top of my Hugo ballot. Oh, the horror!
  
  Sadly for you, your claim fails utterly when you simply take a quick look at the facts. There is no EPH in the Nebulas. There is no EPH in the Locus Awards. There is no EPH in the Clarkes. Yet they all came up with the same patterns of nominations.
  
  Oops! Reality bites the puppies in the behinds!
  
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 14:47:50
    
    “Sadly for you, your claim fails utterly when you simply take a quick look at the facts. There is no EPH in the Nebulas. There is no EPH in the Locus Awards. There is no EPH in the Clarkes. Yet they all came up with the same patterns of nominations.”
    
    Those are not fan-voted awards. They are -industry- awards, some of them curated as well. They do not represent the fans at all. No voting.
    
    As I noted before, the publishing industry as a whole has been at considerable pains to tout their SJW cred and “diversity” lately, uniformly hating on Republicans, Trump in particular. Which is politics, not literature.
    
    They came up with the same patterns of nominations as the Hugos. This does not support your argument that the Hugo awards represent fandom.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 15:29:11
    
    @phantom182 —
    
    “Those are not fan-voted awards. ….They do not represent the fans at all. No voting.”
    
    Ummm, wow. How about educating yourself a little?
    
    Locus awards are voted on by readers of the Locus website.
    
    Nebula awards are voted on by SFWA members. Yes, writers are fans too.
    
    So we have both voter awards AND juried awards (the Clarkes) coming up with the same patterns of results.
    
    That, my friend, is what we call a clue.
    
    “This does not support your argument that the Hugo awards represent fandom.”
    
    Straw man. I never said any such thing. Please read the thread again if you’re actually interested in what I *did* say.
    
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- Kathodus
  Jul 07, 2017 @ 14:31:41
  
  @Phantom – I have never expressed my disdain for white male authors, and I don’t think it’s great that there are none on the ballot this year. Please keep your straw men imaginary rather than lie about real people.
  
  I only nominated two novels this year, as I mostly read either books that I didn’t end up thinking were all that great, or (mostly) I read books from before 2016. Of the two I nominated, one was written by a woman, one by a man.
  
  If the Sad Puppies had continued their slating strategy this year, rather than having abandoned it two years ago, they would have had nominees on the ballot. It doesn’t take a large group to game at least 18-20% of the ballot under the new system.
  
  @Lela – Have you considered that the current state of the Hugos (and most if not all other major SFF awards) has to do with what’s currently trending among the people who nominate and vote for those awards? The field is huge nowadays. It’s pretty much impossible to read just within one’s favorite subjects/authors, let alone sample every subgenre and new indie author. This means a lot of people end up reading things that have been recommended by people within their social group. That’s also one of the reasons I think it’d be cool if someone (the Puppies or otherwise) started a book recommendation/review site for indie authors.
  
  I should also re-re-reiterate that I don’t nominate or vote for works I don’t enjoy. The closest I’ve come to that was when I voted for The Three Body Problem, which was decent and contained very interesting ideas, but was clumsily written. I ultimately felt like it was Hugo worthy even if it was a bit of a slog for me to get through.
  
  Lastly, I do not pay a whole lot of attention to the ethnicity or gender of the authors I read. I suppose this has to do with being white and male and therefore not at all underrepresented in literature and popular culture. You know, a privilege thing 😉
  
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 14:38:54
    
    @Kathodus —
    
    “That’s also one of the reasons I think it’d be cool if someone (the Puppies or otherwise) started a book recommendation/review site for indie authors.”
    
    Right.
    
    If the pups had just chosen to fight for their opinions in constructive ways instead of destructive ones, we could be having a much different discussion right now.
    
    (Also, harkening back to an earlier part of the conversation: now I’ve got to look up when the next Dresden book will be coming out. Although I didn’t think Skin Game as a single novel was worthy of a Hugo, I’ll be happy to vote for the Dresden Files in the series category if that category is still around when the next Dresden gets published. Oh, no, not another white male author!)
    
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 14:53:57
    
    “If the pups had just chosen to fight for their opinions in constructive ways instead of destructive ones, we could be having a much different discussion right now.”
    
    I very much doubt it. You’d still be screaming “NAZI!!! KKK!!! BIGOT!!!” You’d just have some other excuse for the screaming.
    
    That’s why Sarah Hoyt ended Sad Puppies this year. We have shown you all for what you are, and that was the point. Now we move on to do something else, leaving you lot still raving on about Nazis.
    
    Look where we are today. Lela Buis wonders where all the white males are this year in the awards, and you twerps are up over 50 comments telling her off.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 14:55:57
    
    Kathodus, I agree that the problem in the representation is lack of participation from most of the SFF readership. The lack of diversity between the awards seems to suggest a fairly small group that is active in nominating for the awards.
    
    The Puppies actually have the right idea–in order to be represented in the awards, they need to participate in the process. They’ve just come on a little too strong with the slate thing, and the response has been unhelpful, so there are hard feelings all around. Independent authors, especially, are very poorly served by the awards system, as they’re excluded by the standard review process. I do think a site for independents like the Locus or Nebula reading list would offer a good boost into the awards cycle. The SFWA has opened the way for independents in its membership, so it’s probably time the awards took note, as well.
    
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 15:03:32
    
    @Lela – I especially would like to see some sort of site to find good indie authors. I like the idea of art without gatekeepers (most music I listen to is either completely independent or on independent labels), but the sheer volume of indie books out there means finding the good 1% is almost impossible. I usually end up reading them only after they’ve hit it huge (Hugh Howey, David Wong, Andy Weir, etc.).
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 15:20:15
    
    @thephantom182 —
    
    “I very much doubt it. You’d still be screaming “NAZI!!! KKK!!! BIGOT!!!” You’d just have some other excuse for the screaming.”
    
    You lost the chance to find out.
    
    “That’s why Sarah Hoyt ended Sad Puppies this year.”
    
    Yeah, no.
    
    When Hoyt opened up the erstwhile slate to an actual recommendation list, that list ended up looking a lot more like the actual nomination ballot. The sads became irrelevant and didn’t come up with anything new to offer — like an active site to publicize and recommend books that they liked. They totally dropped the ball.
    
    Remember, we saw all those “yeah, the Sad Puppy site will be up and at ’em soon!” posts on the Sad Pup sites before the nominations. Which then led to absolutely NO activity. We saw Hoyt slamming… who was it, Declan? I’ve forgotten — for daring to post his own puppy-affiliated rec list, with her saying something about the Pups would be out with an official list of their own. Which they then never posted. You can try to colorize the history as much as you like, but we know the actual black-and-white facts. Again — they dropped the ball. And yeah, Hoyt has had health problems — but nobody else in the group was even interested enough to pick the ball up for her.
    
    “We have shown you all for what you are, and that was the point. Now we move on to do something else, leaving you lot still raving on about Nazis.”
    
    LOL.
    
    As I’ve said in other locales — you guys are more than welcome to the Dragons. Scarpering off to cheaper and easier-to-scam pastures is exactly the puppy style. Vote early and often, and free — what’s not to love? And in the meantime, the Hugo voters will continue to reward the books we like — just as we did for decades before the pups ever existed.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 07, 2017 @ 15:58:13
    
    @myself —
    
    Small correction. It was actually Amanda Green who slammed Declan on the Mad Genius site and promised a new rec list to be up soon, not Hoyt herself. 1/10/17 for both the Mad Genius and Sad Puppies 4 posts. I want to make sure to keep the facts straight!
    
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thephantom182
Jul 08, 2017 @ 12:12:58

“When Hoyt opened up the erstwhile slate to an actual recommendation list…”

You don’t know anything at all, do you? Sarah runs SP5. Go back and do more research to find out who was running SP4.

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Contrarius
Jul 08, 2017 @ 12:38:21

@thephantom182 —

“Sarah runs SP5. Go back and do more research to find out who was running SP4.”

Oh, please. If the biggest problem you can substantiate from all my posts is the name of who happened to be running Sad Pups at a specific point in time, then you really have run out of defenses for your many false claims.

No surprise there.

Again — you guys are more than welcome to the Dragons. Scarpering off to cheaper and easier-to-scam pastures is exactly the puppy style. Vote early and often, and free — what’s not to love? And in the meantime, the Hugo voters will continue to reward the books we like — just as we did for decades before the pups ever existed.

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- thephantom182
  Jul 08, 2017 @ 16:57:06
  
  Contrarius said: “Oh, please.”
  
  You don’t even know who was running SP4, and you’re telling me “oh please”? You have no idea who said what, and you’re telling me -my- claims are unsubstantiated? You’re just making stuff up now, aren’t you?
  
  You want to know the -real- deal about the Hugo Awards? There are maybe 600-1000 people who decide what the nominations will be in a “normal” non-Puppy year.
  
  As I said, the Hugos do not represent Fandom. Fandom is larger than a thousand Leftists.
  
  Kathodus said: “I can only speak for myself, but it is true that my reading choices have been inspired by the push in the past 10 years for people to go outside their comfort zones and read books by authors who don’t necessarily look like them, have similar genitalia, and/or weren’t raised in the same general culture.”
  
  Yes, we know. And we know you think it noble that you have done so, and kudos to you for your intention, but really, sorting AUTHORS by race/plumbing/location is something that has a very sketchy history.
  
  Kathodus said: “… but it’s difficult for me to read people excoriating eg. Jemisin’s novel as poorly written and a mess,…”
  
  It is a mess. Have you read it? Like listening to a Yoko Ono album while eating glass. At best, and allowing for the convoluted presentation, it is -depressing-.
  
  That’s been the major complaint against the Hugos for 20+ years. They invariably nominate things that come with a bottle of brain bleach.
  
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 08, 2017 @ 17:11:18
    
    @Phantom
    “And we know you think it noble that you have done so, and kudos to you for your intention, but really, sorting AUTHORS by race/plumbing/location is something that has a very sketchy history.”
    
    I think my reading choices are noble? Do you ever bother trying to understand the people you’re replying to, rather than just picking out some point you can grandstand about? Yeah, I’ve been more aware of the author when I’m reading. I’ve been reading outside of the stuff that’s plopped in front of my face. I haven’t stopped reading white men. I don’t have a problem with white men. I don’t have a problem with people not reading books by white men, or with people reading books by white men. I’m not interested in your culture wars, though I occasionally get dragged into them when people accuse me of basing the reading I do in my free time on some sort of political agenda, and it’s especially hard to stay out of them when you are cherry picking and outright misrepresenting facts (ie, your claim that EPH specifically targets Puppies/conservatives/your tribe).
    
    @Phantom
    “It is a mess. Have you read it? Like listening to a Yoko Ono album while eating glass. At best, and allowing for the convoluted presentation, it is -depressing-.”
    
    Caveat: I like the Yoko Ono I’ve heard.
    
    I’ve read the first two books in the Broken Earth series. It is not a mess. Yes, it is told non-linearly. That’s a thing people have been doing for a long time. If I recall correctly, my introduction to that was with “Pulp Fiction,” and I’ve been interested in that sort of thing since then. I do agree it’s depressing, and that none of the characters are at all likable. Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series is also depressing with unlikable characters all around, and that’s possibly my favorite series of the past decade or so. I’m sure you’d disagree – our tastes differ.
    
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 08, 2017 @ 17:22:24
    
    ETA for accuracy: The second Broken Earth book is not written non-linearly. I don’t recall if there are flashbacks or the like, but it isn’t written like the first. Which, man, now that I think about it – that was very well done. Won’t get into spoilers here, though.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 08, 2017 @ 19:11:05
    
    @thephantom182 —
    
    “You don’t even know who was running SP4, and you’re telling me “oh please”?”
    
    That is correct. But you go right ahead and clutch your pearls if it makes you feel better about yourself. 😉
    
    No, in this case it did not — and does not — matter who was running SP at the time (it was Katie Paulk, btw). What mattered was the **organizational** decision. Unless perhaps you wish to claim that Sad Puppies is actually a cult of personality rather than an organization that respects all of its members?
    
    “As I said, the Hugos do not represent Fandom. Fandom is larger than a thousand Leftists.”
    
    And since none of us here have claimed that the Hugos represent all of fandom, this statement is a complete irrelevancy.
    
    This is sort of like that “Have you stopped beating your wife yet” question. We haven’t claimed that the Hugos represent all of fandom, and the Worldcon organization hasn’t claimed that the Hugos represent all of fandom. YOU guys are the only ones who seem to expect the Hugos to do that. The Hugos do represent VOTING fandom, however, as shown by the fact that all the major awards this year are showing the same patterns as the Hugos.
    
    And that’s the point that I keep making, and that you keep ignoring or trying to weasel your way around: the Hugo nominations reflect the same pattern as all the major US awards and nominations that have been made so far this year. So it’s illogical and even silly to keep claiming that the Hugos in particular have some sort of campaign against right-wing ideology, or that they’ve done anything that has kept right-wingers out of awards. As I mentioned before: the Nebulas don’t have EPH; the Locus awards don’t have EPH; the Clarkes don’t have EPH. Yet they are getting the same results as the Hugos. If you’ll stop having hysterics long enough to actually think for a second, you’ll understand what that means.
    
    “but really, sorting AUTHORS by race/plumbing/location is something that has a very sketchy history.”
    
    I agree. Which makes it even more hysterical that you guys keep hyperventilating about ONE year with no white male authors in the shortlist. YOU guys are the ones fixating on race and plumbing, not us!
    
    “That’s been the major complaint against the Hugos for 20+ years. They invariably nominate things that come with a bottle of brain bleach.”
    
    Yet again — so vote for what YOU like. As long as everyone plays by the rules, everyone gets one vote. And if you can’t win while playing by the rules, then you don’t *deserve* to win.
    
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 08, 2017 @ 21:24:37
    
    Kathodus said: “Do you ever bother trying to understand the people you’re replying to, rather than just picking out some point you can grandstand about?”
    
    You -just said- your “reading choices have been inspired by the push in the past 10 years” et cetera. What’s the purpose of doing that? Why pay -any- attention to the provenance of the author at all? Who cares if its a guy or a girl?
    
    Faced with the -absurdity- of sorting authors by race/gender what have you, I have to ask. I mean, why not sort by shoes size? Are we going back to Spencer and cultural evolution? Are we going back the the “female brain” or the “gay brain’, or God help us the “Black brain?”
    
    My old man was in a war over that stuff. I assumed it was settled for all time, and you boys seem very keen to bring it back.
    
    So now we are faced with the crowning stupidity of a Hugo award that has been ” inspired by the push in the past 10 years…” and YOU GUYS are telling Lela and me off for wondering why “white male” got excluded? White and male is probably over half the authors out there, and YOU GUYS are celebrating that they did not get considered in the awards season this year.
    
    And you want to know if I bother trying to understand you.
    
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 08, 2017 @ 21:35:38
    
    Contrarius said: “Unless perhaps you wish to claim that Sad Puppies is actually a cult of personality rather than an organization that respects all of its members?”
    
    Sad Puppies is a few blog posts. That’s what it physically -is.-
    
    Every year, that’s what it is. Larry, or Kate, or Sarah, or Brad, or Amanda, they make a few blog posts. Then the people who read those posts do what they do. That’s the level of “organization” we’re talking about here. SP4 had a website. Wow.
    
    There are no members. There is no structure. It is the most anarchic thing its possible to make and still have it exist.
    
    You really do -not- understand what you are talking about.
    
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 08, 2017 @ 21:54:21
    
    @Phantom
    “You -just said- your “reading choices have been inspired by the push in the past 10 years” et cetera. What’s the purpose of doing that? Why pay -any- attention to the provenance of the author at all? Who cares if its a guy or a girl?”
    
    “So now we are faced with the crowning stupidity of a Hugo award that has been ” inspired by the push in the past 10 years…””
    
    This is what I mean when I ask if you pay any attention at all to what people are actually saying – to the meaning they are attempting to convey. You and your ilk (far right and far left idealogues) are exhausting me with your inability (refusal?) to understand people outside of strict political boundaries.
    
    I said “inspired by.” I also said that the ratio of female:male authors I read is probably now about 60:40 (I recently looked up my past two years history on Goodreads, and that’s roughly the ratio). That’s not a crazily-skewed ratio. I also said that this is an attempt to read outside of the stuff that I mostly am exposed to – an attempt to go outside my comfort zone.
    
    Nowhere did I say that I judge books by the author’s race, ethnicity, gender, etc.. That is all in your head.
    
    Look, man, you can twist anything someone says, given they use enough words, to push any agenda. I could use your words to imply you’re a rabid White Supremacist, I’m sure, if I wanted to be dishonest. I’d rather have an actual discussion, though. You, for some reason, refuse to step out of your Phantom persona and honestly discuss the issues at hand. I’m definitely left of you, but I’m not the straw man you make me out to be. And I refuse to believe you are the straw man you make yourself out to be.
    
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 08, 2017 @ 21:58:52
    
    @Phantom
    “There are no members. There is no structure. It is the most anarchic thing its possible to make and still have it exist.”
    
    Weird, then, the anger Declan Finn inspired when he attempted to just make a few recommendations in the name of the Sad Puppies this year. The thing that inspired the announcement that Sad Puppies was continuing, under the same group of leaders it had before… ? Maybe you missed that.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 09, 2017 @ 00:55:36
    
    @thephantom182 —
    
    “Sad Puppies is a few blog posts. That’s what it physically -is.-
    ….There are no members. There is no structure. It is the most anarchic thing its possible to make and still have it exist.”
    
    Oh, I see. So I guess Sarah Hoyt was lying a couple of weeks ago when she said, and I quote: “Our intention was always to just create a page, in which those who register can post reading recommendations, not just of recent years, but of anything that struck their fancy. There will be a place where you can say when the book was published and if it’s eligible for an award — and not just a science fiction award — and a link to the award page for people to follow, if so minded. [….]So, yeah, there will be a Sad Puppies recommendation site — glowers in the vague direction of servers — soon, and then we’ll refine it and improve it through the years to become a place to find enjoyable reads. ”
    
    Notice all those “we”s and “our”s? Sarah does not say “I” or “me” or “mine”. Notice that “intention” and “will be” and “register” and so on? Yup, sure enough, that’s a group of people, and plans, and web sites, and so on. Hmmm. Yup, sounds like an organization to me. Unless, of course, she was lying.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 09, 2017 @ 01:05:28
    
    @Kathodus —
    
    “Weird, then, the anger Declan Finn inspired when he attempted to just make a few recommendations in the name of the Sad Puppies this year. ”
    
    Yeah, I guess — according to Phantom — that Amanda must also have been lying when she was talking about, and again I quote, “One of my fears is that folks will post their recommendations on a site they think is associated with a group or cause and then get upset when they find their way to the official site and realize their recommendation isn’t there. That is especially true when someone takes to Facebook and says it is time to start getting those Sad Puppy recommendations in and then says he is starting a list for folks to contribute to. The implication is there for folks to make that he is part of the leadership of SP5 and his list is “official”. It isn’t…..The official SP5 site will be the only place where recommendations for the various lists SP5 compiles will be accepted. If you go to anywhere else and they claim to be speaking for SP5, they aren’t. ”
    
    Notice those words and phrases — group, cause, official site, some people are part of the group leadership and some aren’t, some lists are official and some aren’t, some people get to speak for SP5 and some don’t.
    
    Ummm, yeah. That’s an organization, all right. Unless, of course, both Sarah and Amanda were lying.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 09, 2017 @ 01:15:07
    
    @the phantom182 —
    
    “White and male is probably over half the authors out there, and YOU GUYS are celebrating that they did not get considered in the awards season this year.”
    
    I just noticed this line. Yet another in a long line of lies.
    
    No, Phantom, we are not “celebrating” the absence of white males. In fact, we are pretty much indifferent to it, because **we are not the ones obsessing about white males**. There were white males in the nominees last year, and there will no doubt be white males in the nominees again next year. For about the bazillionth time: one year of nominations means nearly nothing in the grand scheme of things.
    
    Please, for heaven’s sake — take a deep breath, get out your smelling salts, make use of a handy fainting couch, loosen up your corset strings — whatever it takes to help you recover from your attack of the vapors.
    
    When even BAEN has few men in their nomination list, it should be pretty obvious even to you that the trend is genre-wide this year and has NOTHING to do with “those evil old Hugos trying to keep the white man down”.
    
    Seriously. Rent a clue.
    
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Robin
Jul 08, 2017 @ 13:54:25

“Whatever happened to white males?”

They’re still there. The Hugos have many categories. They just didn’t make Best Novel this year. Something which has happened exactly once, this year.

CRISIS

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- Kathodus
  Jul 08, 2017 @ 14:16:52
  
  As a white male, I have to admit to feeling flattered at all the concern, though.
  
  I can only speak for myself, but it is true that my reading choices have been inspired by the push in the past 10 years for people to go outside their comfort zones and read books by authors who don’t necessarily look like them, have similar genitalia, and/or weren’t raised in the same general culture. Some of that reading means I delved into my TBR and finally did some perennially-postponed reading. I went through a big Cherryh binge several years ago, and finally got around to reading Bujold; hunted down Tiptree and Brackett, checked out Russ, bounced off MZB (a slow bounce off the Darkover series after attempting to read it in chronological writing order, then a hard bounce after I found out what she’d been up to when she was alive), started hunting down the many Norton books I’d missed, etc.. I’ve also been slightly more likely to check out hot new female or non-white authors than hot new white male authors (slightly – it’s probably a 60:40 ratio). This isn’t for political reasons, it’s a kind of catching up. I can see how maybe Leckie, Jemisin, Wong, Hurley, etc., aren’t some people’s thing (some of those authors aren’t my thing at all, either), but it’s difficult for me to read people excoriating eg. Jemisin’s novel as poorly written and a mess, as purely an award for being a woman and non-white, without taking that as mere politics. Particularly when some of those same people are pushing rough, half-formed stories like those published in Cirsova or by Castalia House (to exaggerate the quality of the bulk of CH’s output that I’ve had the displeasure to read).
  
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- Lela E. Buis
  Jul 11, 2017 @ 00:09:16
  
  Robin, it’s not just that white men didn’t appear in the Best Novel category; it’s that there were none at all in the fiction categories except those recommended by Vox Day. Assume the Rabid Puppies didn’t vote this year. What would be the probability that 0 of 24 finalists appear from a demographic that makes up over 1/3 of the world’s population?
  
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 00:22:33
    
    @Lela —
    
    “What would be the probability that 0 of 24 finalists appear from a demographic that makes up over 1/3 of the world’s population?”
    
    And yet again, for about the bazillionth time — taking a single year out of context means nearly nothing.
    
    Yet again — If you average the percentages over the last five years for Hugo novels alone (I didn’t bother to look up every category), then 35% of the nominees were white males — above your earlier stated 31% of white males in the population. And if you average the five years before that, more than 70% were white males. Oddly enough, I never noticed you or any of the puppies worrying about any of those years in which the nominees were **100%** white males. Gee, I wonder why?
    
    If the NEXT five years showed less than 30% white male nominees, THEN I might start to get interested. But I seriously doubt that is going to happen.
    
    And also — yet again — you and the puppies continually insist on acting as though this year’s nomination pattern is unique to the Hugos. Again, it is not. Again, every major award this year — including even the Baen “adventure fantasy” award shortlist — has under 33% white male nominees. It is quite dishonest to keep pushing the implication that this phenomenon is limited to the Hugo nominations. And it’s difficult to have a productive discussion when dishonesty is an integral part of one side’s argumentation.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 01:51:06
    
    Contrarius, your’e overlooking the elephant in the room here. Vox Day has recommended white men to his voting bloc in the last five years that held the Hugo average at 1/3. The new voting rules cut his results back to 1/12 legitimate candidates.
    
    What do you think caused 0 of 21 finalists in 1973 to be white women?
    
    P.S. Forty percent of the world’s population is white males if you include US white Hispanics. That would be almost 10 of 24.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 02:06:05
    
    @Lela —
    
    “Contrarius, your’e overlooking the elephant in the room here. Vox Day has recommended white men to his voting bloc in the last five years that held the Hugo average at 1/3. The new voting rules cut his results back to 1/12 legitimate candidates.”
    
    Ummm — what? Now you’re giving VD credit for nominees like Neal Stephenson just because VD named them?
    
    Where is your evidence that white male nominees would not have been nominated except for VD? In some cases his specific nominees (like Chuck Tingle or Jim Butcher) would not have been there, but that doesn’t mean other white males wouldn’t have taken their places. In fact, if you’re really interested you might be able to go back through the Hugo voting records and figure out which hopefuls would have been next on the lists for shortlist inclusion; I’m not sure the Hugo administrators keep that much info, but there’s a fair chance that they do.
    
    And VD was certainly not responsible for the 70% male nominees in the five years prior.
    
    “What do you think caused 0 of 21 finalists in 1973 to be white women?”
    
    And for many other years. Again, you’re ignoring the vast difference in the years you’re comparing — you’re treating the results of ONE year the same as the results of MANY years. That’s another dishonest thing for you to do. Please stop making dishonest comparisons.
    
    “P.S. Forty percent of the world’s population is white males if you include US white Hispanics. That would be almost 10 of 24.”
    
    P.S. Now you’re moving your own goalposts. Goalpost moving is yet another dishonest tactic. Please stop using dishonest tactics.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 08:18:27
    
    I didn’t move the goalpost. Go back and read–the 40% is noted in my post above. Also notice that the “open-mindedness” WorldCon voters have recently shown has not included appreciation for Hispanics. This is a serious omission as far as diversity goes, as Latinos in the US are a counted minority, where Asians, for example, are not.
    
    Could we be talking about discrimination here instead?
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 10:14:53
    
    @Lela —
    
    “I didn’t move the goalpost. Go back and read–the 40% is noted in my post above.”
    
    The 40% is your moved goalpost, Lela. Your original claims were, and I quote: “White men are 31% of the US population, give or take” and “I’m just wondering why a demographic that makes up 30% of the US population and 40% of the UK population didn’t end up with at least one representative in each category. If appearance was directly tied to demographic, we should expect about 1/3 of the ballot or 2 of 6 per category would be white men every year.”
    
    So your original goalpost was 30-31%. Now that I’ve shown you the actual average has been more than that over the last five years, and MUCH more than that previously, you’re trying to move the goalpost by including HIspanics. But you can just bet that if there had been a Hispanic name in the nominees this year, you would have counted that as another minority. You’re trying to have it both ways, Lela.
    
    “Also notice that the “open-mindedness” WorldCon voters have recently shown has not included appreciation for Hispanics. This is a serious omission as far as diversity goes, as Latinos in the US are a counted minority, where Asians, for example, are not.”
    
    I don’t think I’ve even heard of a recent sff book written by someone with a Hispanic name, aside from a couple of authors I know of who write gay romance sff. Could you point some out? If you know of any written this year, they certainly should be included with everyone else for consideration.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 14:54:41
    
    I reviewed 2016 book here by Cuban writer Yoss titled Super Extra Grande, though it’s likely not serious enough for a Hugo nomination. You might also look at The Regional Office is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales, Midnight Taxi Tango: A Bone Street Rumba Novel, by Daniel José Older, Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue, Bruja by Wendy C. Ortiz, etc. etc. etc. They’re not that hard to find, only totally ignored by the SFF community.
    
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 15:19:18
    
    @Lela – Malka Older is up for a Campbell this year. I know you are talking specifically about Hispanic men, but I figured I’d throw that out there.
    
    Am I correct in my understanding that this series of posts is arguing that analyzing the race, gender, sex, etc., of people who get literary awards and criticizing awards for not being inclusive of X or Y group is absurd?
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 16:28:00
    
    @Lela —
    
    “I reviewed…. ”
    
    Thanks for those names. The only one I’m familiar with is Older.
    
    It strikes me, though, that you’re blaming the Hugos for not considering books that they still wouldn’t consider regardless of the author’s name or background.
    
    Super Extra Grande, published in 2014, has a GoodReads rating of only 3.34 . He has no books more recent.
    
    The Regional Office is Under Attack! was published in 2016, but only has a rating of 3.27 . His only other two books were from 2013.
    
    Sudden Death is also from 2013, and has a 3.7 rating. It looks like it might have been translated into English for the first time in 2016, making it eligible for this year’s Hugo — but since Cixin Liu’s book was the first ever to win a Hugo in translation, it should be no surprise that a second translation has been passed over.
    
    Bruja, published in 2016, isn’t even sff. It’s shelved at GR as autobiography, memoir, and poetry.
    
    Midnight Taxi Tango is the most likely candidate, with a rating of 4.19 and over 600 ratings, published in 2016. OTOH, it’s part of a UF series, and UF doesn’t tend to do well in the Hugos. It’s also worth noting that Older has been nominated for multiple awards, including the Mythopoeic Award, the Locus Award, the Andre Norton Award, and the World Fantasy Award. The awards community is certainly not ignoring him.
    
    I don’t think you’ve successfully backed up your claim, but thanks for the name. Older, in particular, needs to get pushed further toward the top of my TBR list.
    
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 22:34:27
    
    >Am I correct in my understanding that this series of posts is arguing that analyzing the race, gender, sex, etc., of people who get literary awards and criticizing awards for not being inclusive of X or Y group is absurd?
    
    Kathodus, you’re asking if this is my viewpoint? Yes, you’re right. The next blog up will try to point out that “bean counting” race, ethnicity, gender and sex in an attempt to provide diversity isn’t necessarily going to do that. If there are influences in the publishing and awards system that require writers to follow certain trends or to express certain viewpoints, then this shuts out real intellectual diversity. It forces minority writers to write stereotypes and otherwise toe the line set by the awards voters.
    
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Robin
Jul 08, 2017 @ 13:58:08

‘white men could certainly do better in the awards contests if they did participate and
supported their own.’

Have you *been* to a SF convention? There’s not exactly a shortage of white men! Especially with Worldcon. Somewhat aging white men, at that.

Maybe they felt that the best books this year were the ones nominated. Is it so radical to think white men might vote for books not written by white men?

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- Contrarius
  Jul 08, 2017 @ 14:25:58
  
  @Robin —
  
  “Is it so radical to think white men might vote for books not written by white men?”
  
  Evidently so! Who knew that white men were so xenophobic they couldn’t even vote for books written by anyone else?
  
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  - Lela E. Buis
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 02:00:33
    
    It indicates a big shift in taste, at the very least.
    
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- Contrarius
  Jul 11, 2017 @ 02:11:11
  
  @Lela —
  
  “It indicates a big shift in taste, at the very least.”
  
  I’m not sure I would call it “taste”, but I wouldn’t say you’re wrong, either. I’d call it something more like “perspective” or “open-mindedness”. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in these threads, I think a large part of the shift in nominee percentages is due to a leveling of the playing field. People in general — including white men — are becoming more and more willing to both publish non-white-male authors and to take them seriously after they’re published. That’s definitely a big and important shift, but I think it’s about much more than the word “taste” can encompass.
  
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Contrarius
Jul 08, 2017 @ 19:29:13

Okay, now I’m just cracking up.

Baen has just announced their “Fantasy Adventure Award” shortlist. And whaddaya know — 7/10 (or possibly 8/10, depending on JP Sullivan’s gender) are female. Wow, at most 30% male. That’s a lower percentage of male nominees than the Hugo Award average over the last five years. Whatever is this world coming to when even BAEN has obviously been infiltrated by SJWs???

“Purity” by Jennifer R. Donohue
“Dust of the Fallen” by Barbara Doran
“Thirteen” by Teresa Lynn Michals
“Tracks of the Pi Nereske” by Wendy Nikel
“The Gift of the Afyr” by Wendy A. Simpson
“My Monster” by Camille Singer
“Truth” by Jonathan Steinhauer
“The Blue Widow” by J.P. Sullivan
“And Not Go Hungry” by Laurie Tom
“Calcaneus Bishop and the Seeds of Extinction” by William Wood

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thephantom182
Jul 10, 2017 @ 23:52:00

Lela, some thoughts on the representation issue here:

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2017/07/the-purity-spiral-in-organizations-and.html

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- Lela E. Buis
  Jul 10, 2017 @ 23:58:55
  
  Thanks. I’ll have a look.
  
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- Contrarius
  Jul 11, 2017 @ 00:32:04
  
  @thephantom182 —
  
  “Lela, some thoughts on the representation issue here:”
  
  Thanks for the link, phantom. That article really cracked me up. It’s hysterical to see Republicans complaining about liberals taking over the sciences when Republicans as a whole tend to be actively anti-education, anti-intellect, and anti-science. Guess what — liberals are happy to do the scientific investigations that conservatives constantly ridicule, ignore, hinder, and try to defund at every opportunity.
  
  Liberals are not afraid of learning new things. And that’s a central difference between American liberals and the Americans who are currently calling themselves conservatives.
  
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 09:12:05
    
    “Republicans as a whole tend to be actively anti-education, anti-intellect, and anti-science.”
    
    There you go. That is the motor that drives the osmosis pump, the -lie- that an entire class of people are a certain way. Replace the word “Republicans” with another group, maybe “women” or “blacks” or “Hindus” and see how that sentence plays.
    
    Thank you for finally speaking the truth that is in your heart.
    
    That’s the reality of the Sad Puppy campaign. To penetrate the false veneer of good-natured tolerance, and “we’re all chums here.” Wildly, stupendously successful campaign.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 10:02:56
    
    @thephantom182 —
    
    “That is the motor that drives the osmosis pump, the -lie- that an entire class of people are a certain way. ”
    
    You mean the lie that I supposedly said “people ARE a certain way”?
    
    What I actually said was TEND TO BE. I did not say “are”. Please stop trying to put words in my mouth.
    
    As for the accuracy of my actual statement — tell me, which party is currently trying to cut funding to the CDC and other science-based groups? Which party do creation “scientists” affiliate with?
    
    I rest my case.
    
    “Replace the word “Republicans” with another group, maybe “women” or “blacks” or “Hindus” and see how that sentence plays.”
    
    My actual statement would be false if replaced by another group, so it would play as a false statement.
    
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 11:46:54
    
    Contrarius said: “My actual statement would be false if replaced by another group, so it would play as a false statement.”
    
    Your statement is already false, and the abhorrent nature of it is illustrated perfectly by exchanging the targeted group. You’re trying to skate with some “tend to be” bullshit, when that is also false.
    
    Republicans don’t “tend to be” anything, any more than women, black people or Hindus. But you think they do. You have a stereotype in your head, and you react to that. There’s 100 comments here of you doing it.
    
    There’s a name for that behavior.
    
    That is the behavior the Sad Puppies campaign was started by Larry C. to expose, and it has been extremely successful in doing so.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 12:08:36
    
    @thephantom182 —
    
    “Republicans don’t “tend to be” anything”
    
    On the contrary. Here’s just a couple of examples:
    
    “A separate Pew Research Center report released this month finds that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to prioritize “supporting scientific research” for the President and the Congress in the coming year. ”
    — http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/
    
    “In 2012 fewer Republicans said humans evolved from apes compared to responses taken in 2009. Responses from Democrats and independents have remained about the same.”
    — https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201403/gaps.cfm
    
    “Democrats are particularly receptive to the advice and counsel of scientists, when compared to both independents and Republicans.”
    — http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002716214554756?journalCode=anna
    
    “Among U.S. adults overall, 61% said government investment is essential and 34% said private investment would be enough. These views differ strongly across the party and ideological spectrum, however. A majority of conservative Republicans (55%) say private investment will be enough to ensure scientific progress, and 43% of this group says that government funding is essential. By contrast, an overwhelming majority of liberal Democrats (82%) say government funding is essential, just 16% say private investments, without government funds, will be enough to ensure scientific progress.”
    — http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/07/01/chapter-1-patterns-underlying-public-views-about-science/
    
    “Barry Bickmore, a professor of geology at Brigham Young University and onetime Republican convention delegate in crimson-red Utah County in the nation’s reddest state, has pondered the issue at length. He contends his party is increasingly ruled by zealots and a demand for “ideological purity” that turns off scientists. [….]”Scientists just don’t get those people,” he says of Republicans who adhere to party orthodoxy about scientific questions on climate change, evolution and other hot-button issues. “They [in the GOP] are driving us away, people like me.””
    — http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/sltrib/politics/56795477-90/science-scientists-gop-http.html.csp (This story contains a lot of additional relevant info, but I won’t burden Lela’s blog with it.)
    
    You’re welcome.
    
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 14:36:10
    
    ““A separate Pew Research Center report released this month finds that Blacks are more likely than Whites to prioritize “supporting scientific research”…”
    
    Oh wait, we can’t do that study. That would be racist.
    
    ““In 2012 fewer Hindus said humans evolved from apes compared to responses taken in 2009. Responses from men and Christians have remained about the same.”
    
    Oh wait, we can’t do that study. That would be racist and sexist.
    
    ““Blacks are particularly receptive to the advice and counsel of scientists, when compared to both women and Hindus.”
    
    Oh, wait…
    
    “Bogy Bitemore … contends Feminism is increasingly ruled by zealots and a demand for “ideological purity” that turns off scientists.”
    
    You can see me mocking you, I hope. You continue to make my case for me. Don’t make me reach back into the bowels of the internet for some Hitler speeches. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H6U1NPI0uI
    
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 14:47:03
    
    @Phantom – your argument is strange. To equate Republicanism – a chosen identity that political-based – with race or sex is strange. It makes more sense when it comes to religion, as that is also a chosen identity, though with a lot of caveats (social pressure, indoctrination as a very young child, etc.).
    
    Here is one study I found that does deal with black people’s views:
    http://www.pewforum.org/2009/01/30/a-religious-portrait-of-african-americans/
    
    I just find it weird that you can’t imagine eg. a study comparing acceptance of science among women compared to men. Here’s one, specifically on climate change:
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/women-more-likely-than-men/
    
    If you are a Republican, your opinions about politically-charged issues are likely to lean one way or another. Anyone with a basic understanding of political parties should know that.
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 16:04:48
    
    @thephantom182 —
    
    “““A separate Pew Research Center report released this month finds that Blacks are more likely than Whites to prioritize “supporting scientific research”…”” (etc. and so on)
    
    …. Says the Republican, ridiculing scientific research while claiming that Republicans don’t tend to ridicule scientific research.
    
    Thanks for making my point for me.
    
    “he can’t even see his bigotry”
    
    Actually, it’s “her”. 🙂
    
    “Republicans are the group that its Okay to hate, right? We -know- they’re bad people, why just look at them! So stupid, so shiftless, so lazy…”
    
    Hey, my own father is a devout Republican. Nope, he’s not a bad person. Just an old, confused, credulous, and misguided one, who watches waaaaaaaay too much FOX. At least he has enough brain power left to reject the worst of the neocon ideologies, but I still hate to see him fading so badly in his dotage (no, that isn’t an insult — he’s 84 and developing senile dementia).
    
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thephantom182
Jul 11, 2017 @ 15:16:41

An entirely hypothetical conversation:

Conjunctivitis: “It’s hysterical to see women complaining about men taking over the driving when women as a whole tend to be actively anti-education, anti-intellect, and anti-science.

Le Phantome: “So you’re saying women are dumb and can’t drive? That’s stereotyping.”

Conjunctivitis: “Liar!!! I said TEND TO BE!!!! You said Are, not me!”

Le Phantom: “So you’re saying women tend to be bad drivers. That’s still stereotyping.”

Conjunctivitis: Liar!!! They are too bad drivers! Here, I’ll prove it! [lists a bunch of women driving badly.] See?!!!!!1!!

Le Phantome: “… Dude.”

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- Kathodus
  Jul 11, 2017 @ 15:24:03
  
  Conqueso – “It’s ridiculous that the Luddites want to take over the IT department at my work, given that Luddites are anti-technology.”
  
  Fantomas – “So you’re saying ALL Luddites are anti-technology? Wow, that’s super racist.”
  
  Conqueso – “Luddites aren’t a race, they are followers of a specific idealogy which includes…
  
  Fantomas – “Racist! See what I did there! I reversed your argument! Please, bartender, one Internet, on my friend Conqueso.”
  
  Conqueso – “…”
  
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  - thephantom182
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 15:33:30
    
    You too, Kathodus? Going to pretend along?
    
    You know, ganging up only works in street fighting. On the internet, not so much. All that happened here is that you’ve allied yourself with a bigot, one so blind he can’t even see his bigotry when it is rubbed in his face.
    
    Republicans are the group that its Okay to hate, right? We -know- they’re bad people, why just look at them! So stupid, so shiftless, so lazy…
    
    Seriously, wth is wrong with you people?
    
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  - Kathodus
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 15:53:43
    
    I’m trying to illustrate the point, not gang up on you. Republicans are centered around an ideology. You can make generalizations about Republican beliefs based on the Republican Party’s stated beliefs. It is not bigotry to point that out. Contrarius provided links to research about Republican attitudes toward science. There are also similar studies centered on women and black people (I made a comment about that, but it’s currently in moderation, I assume because of the links).
    
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  - Contrarius
    Jul 11, 2017 @ 16:43:59
    
    @Kathodus —
    
    “Republicans are centered around an ideology. You can make generalizations about Republican beliefs based on the Republican Party’s stated beliefs. It is not bigotry to point that out.”
    
    I think it’s pretty telling that phantom sees “Republicanism” as equivalent to things like gender, race, and religion. To him, apparently, political party is not a matter of choice — it’s something you’re born with, something encoded in your genes, a matter of ingrained faith. It seems to have nothing to do with making educated (or uneducated) decisions.
    
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thephantom182
Jul 11, 2017 @ 19:36:50

Kathodus said: “You can make generalizations about Republican beliefs based on the Republican Party’s stated beliefs.”

Sure you can, but that is not what Contrarius is doing. To reiterate what she said: “Republicans as a whole tend to be actively anti-education, anti-intellect, and anti-science.”

Which is a misstatement of Republicanism, not to mention an observably false statement. It is most definitely a broad-brush denunciation of about half the USA.

Furthermore, it does not matter what the details are regarding the beliefs and goals of a given group are. The important thing here is that you’ve decided that THIS group is bad, and THIS group must be excluded. There is no need to discuss things.

Go look back up this thread. You’ve both shifted from the pretense that all of fandom is represented by the Hugos, to attacking Lela for suggesting white males may not be represented, to now listing reasons why “Republicans” MUST not be represented. They are “anti-education, anti-intellect, and anti-science.”

You two typify a general trend in the genre. You are clearly of the opinion that some people just don’t get it, and they need to be denied any possibility of getting any sort of award. Because an award would encourage undesirable elements, and you can’t have that.

We see you.

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- Contrarius
  Jul 11, 2017 @ 19:45:47
  
  @thephantom182 —
  
  “Which is a misstatement of Republicanism, not to mention an observably false statement.”
  
  Except for the inconvenient fact that actual data backs up my claim, as well as your own behavior.
  
  “Furthermore, it does not matter what the details are regarding the beliefs and goals of a given group are.”
  
  LOL. You mean it didn’t matter that Nazis believed it was okay to kill millions of Jews? Wow, what a revelation. Who knew it didn’t matter?
  
  “The important thing here is that you’ve decided that THIS group is bad, and THIS group must be excluded. There is no need to discuss things.”
  
  Yeah, no. Neither Kathodus nor I have indicated any such thing. As I’ve already stated multiple times: everyone is welcome to vote as long as they play by the rules. Do you believe it’s harder for Republicans to play by the rules than Democrats?
  
  “Go look back up this thread. You’ve both shifted from the pretense that all of fandom is represented by the Hugos”
  
  Another in a long line of lies from phantom. And I’ve already corrected this particular lie at least once.
  
  Nope, nobody in this thread has ever claimed that “all of fandom is represented by the Hugos”. In fact, I have very clearly stated otherwise.
  
  Please stop lying.
  
  “to attacking Lela for suggesting white males may not be represented”
  
  And another. Please point out any of these supposed “attacks” on Lela.
  
  “to now listing reasons why “Republicans” MUST not be represented.”
  
  And yet another. Nope, nobody here has made any such suggestion.
  
  Wow, you’re on a roll.
  
  I’ll repeat once again my initial observation about your posts, which seems all the more evident now: you’ve got everything going for you except the facts.
  
  Why do I continue to not be surprised?
  
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