At the end of July, WorldCon became another in the list of SFF conventions that experienced partisan conflict this year about programming, guests or treatment of guests. Special interest groups have apparently moved on from insisting on strict Codes of Conduct for the conventions to insisting on excluding certain guests and demanding particular programming as part of the same agenda. The complaints flying around are the same ones honed for use in the Code of Conduct campaign, words like “unsafe,” “disrespected” and “harassment.” These loaded words are apparently based on such ordinary things as fiction releases and errors in biographies. It seems mostly a problem on the progressive left, but after conservative author Jon Del Arroz didn’t get what he wanted from a kerfluffle at BayCon, he filed suit for defamation—an indication of how far people will go to get their way.
Most of this problem is just victim/identity politics, where people maneuver for advantage through bullying tactics. If you’re a minority and want recognition, then the best way to do it these days is to make noise about being victimized and disrespected and otherwise causing a stink. Progressives are trained to respond with abject apologies and to jump to make adjustments that give you what you want. Because the cons have limited resources and can’t afford massive disturbances and bad press, most have folded to demands. This has led to complaints from other groups harmed by the changes, such as conservatives or older writers. This must have been a particularly aggressive group of activist bullies at WorldCon. See Mary Robinette Kowal comments on trying to work with them. The only failure of this strategy so far seems to have been DragonCon, which ignored guest withdrawals and fired agitators from their positions on staff.
Whatever, WorldCon management busily tried to accommodate the complaints and save their reputation as progressive. There was quite a scramble going on in the last weeks before the con, where the staff completely tore apart the programming and started over. Sensitive guests withdrew to make room for minorities. Teams were called in to help. But, the truth is, they can’t satisfy the demands because it’s not just about appearing on a panel. The progressive ground has moved out from WorldCon members’ feet. An article in the Daily Dot actually classifies their standard demographic as “overlapping” with the Sad Puppies. Who would have thought?
Next, interesting questions about the Hugo voting that emerged in the crisis.
Lela E. Buis 
Aug 13, 2018 @ 23:35:42
The current environment is like a pendulum–the harder each side pushes, the harder the swingback will be–increasing each time each side mistakenly believes they will somehow keep the pendulum in one place.
Assholery begets assholery. Psychic violence begets psychic violence. Hate cannot be fought with hate, nor bigotry with more bigotry, nor exclusion with more exclusion. Each side sows the seeds of its own destruction.
Since neither extreme will join the other on their side, the center is where we must meet. Until the “squeaky wheel” extremists of either side are deflated (the way DragonCon did) they will continue to do what rewards them. Give in to agitators, and you don’t get peace–you get more agitation. But the way to stand up against agitators is not to attack them–it’s to ignore them and take away their power, and positions of power.
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Aug 14, 2018 @ 01:51:52
At this point, it seems to me most of the people involved just want to break something. They got every single thing they wanted, with a bow on it, and then rioted on Twitter anyway. Now Mary Three Names has done her little dance with the programing… and Antifa is going to have a little Nazi punching on the front steps of the venue.
What are Sad Puppies like me doing? Munching our popcorn and flipping the channel to see if there’s anything else on.
Lost in all of this is the enjoyment of science fiction stories. Nobody at WorldCon this year is thinking about Science Fiction. They’re wondering if the rioters outside will burn the building down with them in it.
In the interest of historical contrast, I offer up this blast from the past; Vonda McIntyre from 2015, offering to walk people at WorldCon to their rooms, in case an Eeeevile Puppy might get them.
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/05/social-justice-benches.html
2015, imaginary fascists under every bed. 2018, actual real fascists beating people on the front steps.
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Aug 14, 2018 @ 12:21:44
Don’t forget that many (maybe most) of the people agitating are doing so to get free publicity to help them sell their books. When you do something that works, the temptation to try to do it again has got to be overwhelming.
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Aug 14, 2018 @ 14:46:21
I do agree that JDA is pulling this stunt (if he actually does it) mostly for the free publicity. He said as much previously, that trolling the SJWs was a career enhancement. (And it is. Which should tell you something, but never mind.)
But, peace be upon Mary Three Names and all the holy followers of Social Justice, the most these JDA racist/bigot/homophobe hate-y haterz are going to do is show up with five friends and a sign that says “Pedophilia is Bad!!!1!” That’s what we’re talking about here.
Meanwhile, the Peace & Love & Tolerance side aka WorldCon (and I’m naming Vonda McIntyre here because “I’ll Walk With You” at Sasquan? Really?) are reaping what they have sown these last 20 years.
Here’s the thing, Greg. Momentarily granting for the sake of argument that the whole Sad Puppy phenomenon was pure Capitalistic self-promotion: who is showing up at WorldCon with armed Nazi Brownshirts this year? If your ass is going to get kicked at the Hugo Awards Presentation this year, members of which totalitarian faction are going to be doing the kicking?
It will -not- be those dangerous Nazi racist/bigot/homophobe Sad Puppies, because we all stayed home the last two years. Even the Horrid Minions of [gasp!] VOX DAY!!! [dun dun duuuun!] are… not there. The Dread Ilk all stayed home with their popcorn.
What are we to make of this phenomenon, Greg?
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Aug 14, 2018 @ 15:17:23
Well, I’d say it was self-promotion disguised as moral outrage–something the Puppies pioneered, but which they don’t have a monopoly on. (It shows the importance of filing for patents promptly!) 🙂
I think the folks you’re talking about this year are what I sometimes call the “Twitter Puppies” because, like the Sad Puppies, they’re a group of unhappy authors who want to get more attention (and because they think it’s all about the authors–not the works). These guys spend so much time on Twitter supporting each other that (unsurprisingly) they don’t actually produce all that much work to support. They seem to get stuff on the Hugo Ballot every year, but I don’t think they have an overt slate.
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Aug 14, 2018 @ 15:44:58
“Well, I’d say it was self-promotion disguised as moral outrage–something the Puppies pioneered, but which they don’t have a monopoly on.”
I must have missed the time that Sad Puppies demanded and got a politically based do-over of the entire WorldCon program, Greg. What year did that happen?
And I can’t remember when a Sad Puppy writer got somebody removed from consideration from Locus with a tweet-storm.
Was there an instance of the Puppy Defense League showing up armed and dangerous at WorldCon, ever? Like, in recorded history?
All I’m suggesting is that the continued focus on Conservative individuals agitating to get eyeballs on their books may be somewhat disingenuous. JDA is not the elephant in the room here.
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Aug 14, 2018 @ 22:34:11
The Sad Puppies are traditionalists and not counted minorities so they don’t get consideration for their complaints–at least not from WorldCon. I’ve got more on this issue coming in the next couple of blogs. It looks like the group of people who make up WorldCon have been giving only lip service to diversity, as some people have been suspecting.
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Aug 15, 2018 @ 08:55:40
“It looks like the group of people who make up WorldCon have been giving only lip service to diversity…”
That’s because “diversity” is a political ploy to beat up the Squares, just like pacifism, feminism and environmentalism. You can tell because everywhere these all-White assholes go there’s violence, they molest women, and they leave tons of garbage behind.
To date, the legitimate accusations of #MeToo are 95% Lefty men in positions of power, molesting the help. The other 5% seems to be Lefty women in positions of power, molesting the help. And if I’m not mistaken the loudest voices screaming GAMERGATE!!! are pretty much all in jail now for molesting women. “Feminist ally” means “sneaky predator.”
The false piety fairly drips from them.
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Aug 15, 2018 @ 22:08:58
I’m suspicious of the #MeToo stuff. It looks like a political strategy from both sides to investigate prominent Lefties/Righties and out them in public to reduce their political mojo.
Diversity does rate a check now and then. Assuming everyone is trying equally, then we ought to see something like population demographics in publication and awards results. Voting for people just because they’re a minority isn’t helpful, though.
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Aug 20, 2018 @ 18:41:33
If the Sad Puppies had any minorities. Which they don’t.
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Aug 20, 2018 @ 19:33:54
“If the Sad Puppies had any minorities. Which they don’t.”
Actually, they do. I tried hard to find a simple, quick list of those associated with either the Sads or the Rabids, but I couldn’t, so I’m only going off the top of my head:
Jon del Arroz, the agitator and self-styled “Leading Hispanic Voice in Science Fiction,” is, in fact, Hispanic.
Cheah Kai Wai is Asian.
Sarah Hoyt, one of the leading Sad Puppies, is a Hispanic woman. Here’s her Wikipedia summary:
Hoyt was born on November 18, 1962 in the village of Granja, Águas Santas, Maia near Porto, Portugal, a major port city on the Atlantic coast. Educated in both Portugal and the United States, she graduated from University of Porto, with a Master’s equivalent in Modern Languages and Literatures with a major in English and a minor in German. She also speaks Swedish, Italian and French, with varying degrees of fluency. Married in 1985 to Dan Hoyt (a science fiction author and mathematician [1]), she has two teenaged sons. She became a United States citizen in 1988 in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is a member of Mensa, SFWA, MWA, and RWA. She was the first female member of the Associação Atlética de Aguas Santas (the sports club in Aguas Santas Maia).
As of 2016, she lives in Colorado.
I know there are more than that, especially if being a woman is counted as a minority. I’m sure many progressives consider each of them to be traitors to their heritage(s), or “not true minorities” (see: the No True Scotsman Fallacy), but the fact remains, they are all minorities according to the current progressive definition.
That’s because the situation is far more complex than the “big two” political tribes (conservative vs. liberal) make it out to be. Viewpoints vary across spectra and they overlap with culture, race, upbringing, experiences, socioeconomic class, sex, gender, and many other factors. The two Puppy groups, never all that firmly defined except by those who claimed to be part of them, themselves encompass various aspects. Each is united by certain viewpoints toward literature, genre fiction and SFF in particular, but they’re far from monolithic.
And they do include minorities. They just aren’t within the political stable of the left–an inconvenient truth for those who want to conflate the Sads and Rabids or paint all Puppies as the same, or as Nazis or any other extremist label.
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Aug 20, 2018 @ 21:13:01
You must be really desperate if you’re telling me Portuguese people aren’t white.
Dude, I live in Massachusetts.
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Aug 20, 2018 @ 22:10:33
Minority status has little to do with being white or nonwhite. In the current progressive parlance, white women are “minorities” unless they’re conservative. Hispanics are “minorities” unless they’re conservative. Black people are harder to argue with, but the left usually tries–if they’re conservative. Jews are minorities–unless they’re conservative. See a trend here?
In other words, “minority” has become, in Orwellian fashion, something other than its plain meaning. This becomes utterly clear when realizing that the phrase “minority-majority” actually makes sense if you accept the progressive narrative–that even if you’re in the majority in some arena, you get to use “minority” status to have it both ways.
If we genuinely want to use accurate words, we’d need something like “disadvantaged ethnicity”, something that means that the person is facing some kind of unjust societal disadvantage–for example, women in SFF up until the last decade, or men writing Romance, or black people writing anything not related specifically to their ethnicity. By that measure, Portuguese is not disadvantaged–but until the progressive majority stops misusing the word “minority,” Sarah Hoyt is, in fact, Hispanic, a woman, and a minority.
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Aug 21, 2018 @ 08:25:26
We know where you live, Andrew.
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Aug 21, 2018 @ 20:53:01
Of course you do.
Shadowdancer Duskstar says
Yep. It’s one of the many reasons why I don’t believe he’s a cripple either. Or that he has minders. His father is dead, that much we know from one of my clanmates who’d been keeping a digital eye on him at the time (a daily google search alert, really) and spotted the obituary.
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Aug 21, 2018 @ 23:15:09
Isn’t Spain about 10 miles from Africa? And Portugal isn’t that much further. That suggests that Hispanic as in European and Portuguese as in European could easily include a lot of African DNA. As in Moorish. I don’t know why there’s such an argument about whether particular authors are of Spanish or New World origin. Counted minorities are counted minorities, regardless.
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Aug 21, 2018 @ 23:45:37
Lela said: “Isn’t Spain about 10 miles from Africa?”
Saharan Africans are landing on the Greek and Italian islands in open boats every day. Easy with a sail, maybe a bit far for swimming.
Minorities are counted for political purposes, the ones doing the counting move the rules around to suit whatever their goal is on any particular day. One day Sarah Hoyt is White, the next day she’s a POC, the day after she’s a Mormon male living in Utah.
According to Tempestuous Bradford we’re all irredeemable racists anyway, so really there’s no point in worrying about it.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 00:22:18
@Lela —
We’ve been over the Portuguese thing before on your blog, and more than once. I don’t want to invest a lot of time here — GIGO seems to be the standard modus operandi on this blog (bogus premises leading to equally bogus conclusions) — but I can’t resist correcting this particular false claim yet again.
Yet again: only 1% of people with Portuguese heritage in the US self-identify as Hispanic, according to the US Census Bureau. The VAST majority (99%) do not.
Please stop repeating this bogus claim.
From Pew:
“If you turn to the U.S. government for answers, you quickly discover that it has two different approaches to this definitional question. Both are products of a 1976 act of Congress and the administrative regulations that flow from it.
One approach defines a Hispanic or Latino as a member of an ethnic group that traces its roots to 20 Spanish-speaking nations from Latin America and Spain itself (but not Portugal or Portuguese-speaking Brazil).
The other approach is much simpler. Who’s Hispanic? Anyone who says they are. And nobody who says they aren’t.”
[….]
“Q. What about Brazilians, Portuguese, and Filipinos? Are they Hispanic?
A. They are in the eyes of the Census if they say they are, even though these countries do not fit the official OMB definition of “Hispanic” because they are not Spanish speaking. For the most part, people who trace their ancestry to these countries do not self-identify as Hispanic when they fill out their Census forms. Only about 4% of immigrants from Brazil do so, as do just 1% of immigrants from Portugal or the Philippines. “
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 10:53:18
It’s weird that this myth that Portuguese-speaking people are Hispanic won’t die. It can’t be coming from Spanish or Portuguese-speaking people themselves, since the word clearly means “Spanish speaking” in both languages.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 09:29:19
Contrarius, my point is that you haven’t seen Sarah Hoyt’s DNA results. If her ancestors are from the Iberian Peninsula, she might well rate as a person-of-color other than Hispanic because of African ancestry. I found one reference at Wikipedia that noted up to 18% African DNA in parts of Spain and up to 22% in Portugal. Trying to classify people is a stupid exercise, really, but if she self-identifies as a person-of-color, then that needs to be respected.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 11:22:20
@Lela —
“if she self-identifies as a person-of-color, then that needs to be respected.“
Please quote out any statement in which Hoyt has claimed to be part African.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 12:35:09
@Greg
I’m pretty sure it comes from conservatives who are desperate for a few diversity points.
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Aug 21, 2018 @ 20:54:19
By the way, WordPress’ commenting thread system is shit and eats shit.
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Aug 21, 2018 @ 21:53:53
It could be worse, but only if it electrocuted the users.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 14:03:18
Re: Hoyt and “diversity” or “minority” issues:
1. She’s a woman in SFF–that’s a localized minority, just as being a man in Romance is. The disadvantage to being a woman in SFF is well established, though it is definitely fading as the digital publishing boom allows them to bypass the traditional gatekeepers.
2. The progressive narrative says people can be whatever they want to be. They can claim a gender opposite to their born sex, or no gender at all. This is fine when applies with common sense. Is Meghan Markle black? When she wants to be–and that’s okay in many cases. History is filled with people who code-switch and navigate two or more cultures, trying to be part of each in turn. The only limit to this principle I’ve seen is in extreme cases such as the Rachel Dolezal case, where even the most extreme champions of diversity couldn’t stomach a Norwegian-ancestry woman masquerading as black.
Or, progressives can abandon this principle and go with scientific definitions of genetic background, gender-as-sex and so on–which also fails on many levels and leads to the ugly white-supremacist bullshit about racial purity and human breeding.
So, at the end of the day, the “self-identification” principle is the best we can probably do. That’s where progressives get it right IMO–but they can’t just toss their own principles when it’s convenient and retain any semblance of credibility.
3. Upbraiding conservatives for lack of inclusiveness or “diversity,” and then attacking them when they DO include non-majority persons, puts them in a no-win situation. They’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. A suspicious mind might conclude that’s exactly what progressives want–a political victory, not actual progress.
But the truth is, there are plenty of minorities among conservatives, of those minority persons weight their political viewpoint or interests more heavily than their ethnic or gender interests. If that weren’t true, there would be very few conservative women, because it’s overwhelmingly been the left that’s supported women’s issues. Conservative black persons usually identify as such because they have “found their tribe” more among conservatives than among people who share their ethnicity, race or culture. Hispanics, however you define them, are often conservative, because in general the Hispanic world is majority-Catholic and Catholics generally tend conservative.
Bottom line? If progressives want true progress, they have to accept the progress that does exist within the conservative spectrum, even if it’s not to their liking. Similarly, if conservatives want to remain part of the broader part of Western society and not retreat deeper and deeper toward the extremes or the “base,” they need to live up to their own best principles and be inclusive of everyone who shares those principles, regardless of race, creed, etc.
Frankly, it’s often tribalism itself that’s the problem, not the supposed issues that people divide themselves over.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 17:49:50
I think you’ve put your finger on the important point David. When Sarah Hoyt and Larry Corriea say “I’m Portuguese” or “I’m Hispanic,” they’re claiming minority status. That means they feel like a minority and self-identify that way. Just because they trace the majority of their DNA from Europe doesn’t mean they wouldn’t qualify as a minority if you checked. They may also have ancestry from Cuba or Mexico, which would lead to very complex DNA. New World Hispanics are often multi-racial.
This business of self-identification has been in the news a bit just lately. Rachel Dolezal is an extreme case, but there’s also Elizabeth Warren, for example, who has lived her life thinking she has Native American heritage, but refuses to release DNA results to back this up. The easy availability of DNA testing means a lot of people have had to give up closely held beliefs about their heritage, from white supremacists who think they have racial purity to whites trying to identify as Native American. A lot of black folks have found out what percentage white they are, too.
Should I accept that Rebecca Roanhorse identifies as Native American and reject Sarah and Larry’s claim to the heritage they identify with? The only reason there’s a squabble about it is affirmative action.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 20:14:51
@Lela —
“I think you’ve put your finger on the important point David. When Sarah Hoyt and Larry Corriea say “I’m Portuguese” or “I’m Hispanic,””
Here go these garbage premises again. GIGO, Lela.
Please quote any statement in which either Hoyt or Correia have claimed to be Hispanic.
Yet again, only 1% of people with Portuguese heritage in the US self-identify as Hispanic.
“and reject Sarah and Larry’s claim to the heritage they identify with?”
WHAT claim, Lela? Yet again — please quote any statement in which Sarah or Larry have claimed minority status.
And no — simply being an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants does not qualify one for minority status. I can just picture all the immigrant Germans or Italians or Brits trying to claim they’re minorities. 😉
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 21:17:37
@Lela —
Here you go — quoted from a guest post on MGC:
“Which, I imagine, is how some of my friends who are being identified as ‘minorities’ feel about being identified as such coupled with their writing. But I’ve spent enough time hanging out with Sarah Hoyt (who does not consider herself Hispanic… ) and Larry Corriea to know that they have rolled their eyes and made a joke out of it. ”
So please, stop making claims about these people that they don’t even make about themselves.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 21:36:37
Contrarius, there are a number of references around. I don’t think Correia and Hoyt call themselves “Hispanic,” which indicates Spanish heritage, but other people aren’t so particular and include them on lists of “Hispanic” writers fairly regularly.
Here’s an interview with Correia on being Portuguese and a minority. Here’s one where he calls himself a Latino.
Here’s Hoyt on trying to fit in within the US after immigrating from Portugal and acceptance of being classified Latina. Here, she does call herself Latina.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 23:11:41
@Lela —
“I don’t think Correia and Hoyt call themselves Hispanic”
That is correct — they don’t. Despite repeated claims on this blog to the contrary.
“but other people aren’t so particular”
Why should any of us care what “other people” say about their membership in a specific group, or lack thereof? You said, and I quote, “When Sarah Hoyt and Larry Corriea say “I’m Portuguese” or “I’m Hispanic” — except that they don’t actually call themselves Hispanic, and “Portuguese” is not a minority group. As has already been explained to you several times.
“Here’s an interview with Correia on being Portuguese and a minority. ”
Please try actually READING that interview. He never once refers to himself as a minority. The closest he comes is this: “Because we are such a relatively small group in America” — which can be said by anyone whose ancestors come from a small country. People from Malta? Instant minority. People from Liechtenstein? Wow, another minority.
Cmon — that gets really silly really quickly.
“Here’s one where he calls himself a Latino.”
Again, please READ that post. He is being sarcastic — “a term stolen from Sonya Sotomeyor, since that was around the same time that I was filling out some EEOC worksheets at my Military Industrial Complex job and discovered that Portuguese was legally considered Latino by the Department of Labor”.
He actually very clearly calls himself WHITE — “If I hated white men then A. I probably shouldn’t choose to live in rural Utah. and B. probably shouldn’t be one.”
You really should READ the things you try to use as evidence.
“Here’s Hoyt on trying to fit in within the US after immigrating from Portugal”
Yet again — being an immigrant does not automatically make one a minority.
“and acceptance of being classified Latin”
And yet again — she isn’t saying that she believes herself to be Latin, she is saying that she has given up on correcting OTHER people who call her that. “And btw, the reason I stopped resisting identifying as Latin is because other people are making that identification for me, usually people who have a grudge”.
Do you have a grudge against Hoyt, Lela?
GIGO, Lela. That’s why it’s such a waste of time to post here. If you continue to insist on posting garbage claims as your starting points, you will inevitably end up with garbage conclusions.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 23:28:57
People from Brazil actually do quality as Latinos/as–in Spanish, anyway–but not people from Portugal. This is consistent with US usage. Weirdly, the term in Portuguese seems to mean just Spanish-speaking.
So I think it’s fair to say that neither Hoyt nor Correia is either Hispanic nor Latino. I’d also disagree that people should be free to declare that they’re whatever they want to be, barring a few categories where there’s no way to tell other than what a person says. This is the critical difference between someone claiming to be black vs. someone claiming to be trans.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 21:53:41
“I can just picture all the immigrant Germans or Italians or Brits trying to claim they’re minorities.”
Are they Jewish? If so, they’ll qualify.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 22:49:51
@Lela —
“Are they Jewish? If so, they’ll qualify.”
Try to keep up, Lela. We’re talking about people as immigrants, not people as members of religious groups.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 23:00:46
“Are they Jewish? If so, they’ll qualify.”
Try to keep up, Lela. We’re talking about people as immigrants, not people as members of religious groups.”
Oh, dear. Jews are a minority ethnic group, tracked through mitochondrial DNA. Unless you have the right stuff, you can’t own/lease land in Israel.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 23:17:29
@Lela —
“Oh, dear. Jews are a minority ethnic group, tracked through mitochondrial DNA.”
Ummm, Lela. In case you didn’t realize it, anyone of any ethnic heritage can convert to Judaism.
https:// en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Conversion_to_Judaism
“Unless you have the right stuff, you can’t own/lease land in Israel.”
GIGO, Lela.
http://www. buypropertyinisrael. com/article/types-of-land-in-israel
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 23:23:55
@Lela —
Further on buying land in Israel:
“Unlike the State owned land (more than 90% of the land in Israel is government-owned), much of which can only be leased to Israeli citizens or Jewish non-residents, privately owned land is far less restrictive. Owners of privately owned land in Israel are free to transfer ownership of their property to anyone, Jew or non-Jew, citizen of Israel or non-citizen of Israel. This type of land is in high demand and much of it can be found in the urban areas of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa.”
https://www .jpost. com/Business/Real-Estate/Foreigners-guide-to-property-market-Who-owns-the-land
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Aug 23, 2018 @ 01:10:18
I don’t really have a dog in the Hispanic/Portuguese/Latino fight, but I gather it’s a pretty widely-debated question. The list of COUNTED minorities who rate for affirmative action in the US is actually quite small. It does not include various peoples of color: Asians, for example, Jews, Arabs or LGBTQ persons, regardless that various of these folks continue to consider themselves disadvantaged minorities. I’m no more opposed to considering Portuguese a minority than anyone else.
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Aug 23, 2018 @ 10:46:42
@Lela —
“The list of COUNTED minorities who rate for affirmative action in the US is actually quite small.”
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with your false claims about Hoyt and Correia.
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Aug 24, 2018 @ 10:13:20
Isn’t the squabble about whether Correia and Hoyt qualify for affirmative action (i.e. extra promotion because of their ethnic origin)? Hispanic/LatinX are one of the counted minorities in the US that do qualify, but Portuguese aren’t part of this group. Isn’t that what you’re saying?
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 20:10:15
@David —
“1. ….”The disadvantage to being a woman in SFF is well established”
ROFLMAO.
We are constantly hearing claims from folks like JDA and assorted puppies that men are actually the ones disadvantaged in the publishing industry right now. Please, guys, make up your minds!
“2. ….”but they can’t just toss their own principles when it’s convenient and retain any semblance of credibility.”
Where are these principles being tossed? Please be specific.
“3. Upbraiding conservatives for lack of inclusiveness or “diversity,” and then attacking them when they DO include non-majority persons, puts them in a no-win situation. They’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t.”
Except that conservatives mostly don’t. And please be specific — where exactly have conservatives been attacked for including non-majority persons?
“But the truth is, there are plenty of minorities among conservatives”
Yeah, no.
There are A FEW minorities amongst conservatives, not “plenty”. The common term here is “token”.
“If that weren’t true, there would be very few conservative women”
Actually, there ARE few conservative women, relatively speaking. As of 2017, only 37% of US women identify as Republican or leaning Republican, according to Pew.
“they have to accept the progress that does exist within the conservative spectrum”
Of which there is shamefully little, for quite obvious reasons.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 21:44:46
“1. ….”The disadvantage to being a woman in SFF is well established”
ROFLMAO.
We are constantly hearing claims from folks like JDA and assorted puppies that men are actually the ones disadvantaged in the publishing industry right now. Please, guys, make up your minds!”
This issue is looking curiouser and curiouser. There has, of course, been a strong push at WorldCon, for example, to exclude men completely from the fiction awards. But then, we hear that the award finalists were excluded from panels in order to seat white men? Hm.
I think people are talking out of both sides of their mouths about this. White men are a talented bunch, after all, and their work can be really attractive to other men (and women). Even if publishers try hard to publish and promote women, those sneaky guys still get published on Amazon.
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Aug 22, 2018 @ 22:48:20
“There has, of course, been a strong push at WorldCon, for example, to exclude men completely from the fiction awards.”
GIGO, Lela. This claim is nonsense.
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Aug 23, 2018 @ 00:55:26
Then where are they?
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Aug 23, 2018 @ 10:45:24
@Lela —
“Then where are they?”
I’m not going to go count all the nominees this year, but two of them were in the novel shortlist, for starters.
Don’t be a conspiracy theorist, Lela. Evil Conspiracies are waaaaaaay down the list of likely causes here. If you want to take a look at some of the much more likely causes for the current gender imbalance, go take a look at the thread over on File770.
http:// file770. com/2018-hugo-winners/comment-page-1/#comments
I’ll answer whatever other responses to me have been left overnight, but then I’m out of here again. As I’ve already mentioned, posting facts here is a complete waste of time because you cling so desperately to counterfactual and just plain fantabulist claims like this.
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Aug 23, 2018 @ 23:40:56
Male Hugo finalists in the fiction categories 2018:
Best novel: John Scalzi, Kim Stanley Robinson, Yoon Ha Lee
Best novelette: K.M. Szpara and Yoon Ha Lee
Best series: Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jackson Bennett
Best YA: Sam J. Miller, Philip Pullman
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Aug 24, 2018 @ 09:56:10
Hugo Fiction Winners:
Best Novel: The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Best Novella: All Systems Red, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)
Best Novelette: “The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)
Best Short Story: “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™,” by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex, August 2017)
Best Series: World of the Five Gods, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Harper Voyager / Spectrum
Best Young Adult Book: Akata Warrior, by Nnedi Okorafor (Viking)
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Aug 25, 2018 @ 17:43:25
Yeah, so male writers did not win this year, because the majority of Hugo voters preferred works by female authors this year. Though John Scalzi finished second after N.K. Jemisin, even though “The Collapsing Empire” was very weak IMO. As for my personal voting, I ranked Yoon Ha Lee first in novel and novelette, but other voters clearly felt differently.
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Aug 25, 2018 @ 19:08:06
Cora said: “…because the majority of Hugo voters preferred works by female authors this year.”
If Nora was an Irish red-head those three books would have still won three Hugos in a row, Cora?
Sure.
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Aug 25, 2018 @ 21:05:09
Plus, 50% of these winners have African American ancestry. This is an interesting result, as the population demographic for African Americans in the US is 13%, and fewer than that write science fiction/fantasy. Plus, all of them are women.
I’m not saying the winners don’t have good ideas, but why were these works preferred over say, Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory or The Changeling by Victor LaValle? These novels have been identified as first rate by both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award and didn’t even make the ballot.
Cora, I gather you voted? Just curious. Did you read all the fiction works?
P.S. You guys do know I think Jemisin and Scalzi came in first and second because voters thought it would annoy Vox Day, right?
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Aug 26, 2018 @ 02:19:52
Lela said: “You guys do know I think Jemisin and Scalzi came in first and second because voters thought it would annoy Vox Day, right?”
I expect you’re right. I see the Guardian UK waxing lyrical about Nora’s Hugo today, and how edifying three books about slavery, torture and pointless death are.
And Greg Hullender wonders why I stopped reading…
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Aug 27, 2018 @ 01:09:15
Yes, I voted and read the finalists at least in part. I didn’t finish everything, because not everything was to my taste and I don’t need to read a whole novel to determine that I don’t like it. Besides series are damned long, but I at least gave everything a try. Ditto for the puppy years BTW.
And for the record, I placed neither The Stone Sky nor The Collapsing Empire at the top of my ballot. Instead, I placed The Stone Sky somewhere in the middle and The Collapsing Empire near the bottom, because I found it very weak.
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Aug 27, 2018 @ 20:05:23
Cora said: “Instead, I placed The Stone Sky somewhere in the middle and The Collapsing Empire near the bottom, because I found it very weak.”
Prolapsing Empire is very weak. It is the kind of thing you’d read in an airport and leave in the seat pocket of the plane when you landed.
Stone Sky felt a lot like Nora was trying to hit her readers with a bat, not to be read under any circumstances.
Funny how they won then, isn’t it? Or even got nominated, for that matter.
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Aug 27, 2018 @ 22:06:11
I thought you told us you haven’t been reading any SFF for a few years now. Did you really read either of these books?
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Aug 28, 2018 @ 01:48:37
Greg Hullender said: “I thought you told us you haven’t been reading any SFF for a few years now. Did you really read either of these books?”
No, I did not. Scalzi lost me at the first sentence of the blurb, as I’ve said here and elsewhere. I don’t want to read about the futile effort to save a dying empire. It’ll be, at best, like every other dying empire novel. That’s my best-case.
Nora lost me at page 1 of book 1 in her series, as I’ve also said here and elsewhere. Anything that -starts- with a dead child is going to run downhill from there. That’s already farther down the hill than I’m willing to go. The other two are just farther down the Descent Into Heck.
The last book I read was Neal Asher’s “The Soldier”, which was fun. Pretty much what’s missing in the above two cases.
But am I -wrong- in my assessment?
Also, further to this, people are not content to limit what new SF gets written to solid SJW principles. Now they are branching out to condemn books from the past as “problematic.” T.H. White was apparently a closet Nazi.
http://archive.is/dZA5r
Christopher Chupik contributed this gem of lunacy to Mad Genius today, it is a beauty. Part of my problem of having battles come and pick me, instead of me picking them. Run up the Jolly Roger and run out the cannon.
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Aug 28, 2018 @ 09:38:25
“Collapsing Empire” was fun but forgettable. Three stars (honorable mention) if I were rating it as a short story. But the Stone Sky trilogy was fantastic. Five stars for sure. Note that N.K. Jemisin has attacked me personally on Twitter more than once (probably because I’ve given less-than-great reviews to a couple of her short stories), so I’ve got no reason to praise her work other than its content.
I agree that the bit about the murdered child really put me off too. The first book tells the story in three different time periods, where the first chapter is the present, and the other two are decades earlier. The earlier chapters interested me a lot more at the start; I’m not a big apocalypse fan, especially when someone seems to be destroying a great civilization out of sheer contumacy. But things look different the more you read.
It had great characters, a great setting, a complex plot, and some cool ideas. My biggest complaint is that I was never deeply emotionally invested in the characters. People will likely be talking about this series for decades, and if you didn’t read it, you missed out. “Collapsing Empire,” not so much.
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Aug 28, 2018 @ 22:34:56
I have to comment on Cora’s post about partially reading books not to your taste. If I hadn’t been planning to review The Fifth Season, I wouldn’t have read past the first 25 pages. On the other hand, I slogged all the way through Autonomous and New York 2041 and ended up thinking they were a worthwhile effort.
Cora, did you nominate? Had you read everything you nominated?
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Aug 29, 2018 @ 01:58:00
Yes, I nominated and I read everything I nominated. And the majority of my nominees were written by women plus a few trans and non-binary authors. I had a few men as well, but then I genuinely tend to prefer SFF by women to SFF by men. Coincidentally, I nominated neither The Stone Sky nor The Collapsing Empire. I figured The Stone Sky didn’t need my help either way and there were novels I liked better. Hadn’t read The Collapsing Empire at that point and wouldn’t have nominated it, even if I had. Two of my best novel nominees made it – Provenance and Raven Strategem.
But then I nominate only works I enjoy. Unfortunately, Hugo voters don’t always agree with me on which works are excellent and sometimes nominate works I dislike. And life is too short to waste on bad books beyond ascertaining they are bad.
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Aug 29, 2018 @ 09:14:58
I tend to like SFF by women, too, but there are times when I really like men’s work, too. Unfortunately, I’m like Phantom, and it’s really hard to make me happy. As far as I’m concerned, this year’s big winner was All Systems Red. It’s been a long time since I’ve found something I like that well. I’ve even paid the exorbitant price for the sequels. 🙂
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Aug 29, 2018 @ 13:29:23
Lela said: “Unfortunately, I’m like Phantom, and it’s really hard to make me happy.”
~:D Har!
In truth, I only have a few iron rules.
1) Don’t mock my religion, or other people’s religion. Atheism is not the only legitimate philosophy, and I don’t want to hear about it.
2) The people with the major personality disorders and poor life choices should be the -bad- guys, unless the MC is trying to become Good. Anti-heros, I’m very done with that whole thing. Tortured Souls with Poor Impulse Control who are Oppressed By Life!!11!, if I never read another one of those it’ll be too soon. Also thieves, drug addicts, slaves, general low life, you better have something really amazing going on in there.
3) It better not be another re-do of Frankenstein. Seriously, there are other themes, let’s move on.
4) Horrible people doing horrible things to each other in a horrible dystopia, I’m not reading it. So all the torture, sex, torturesex, violence, murder/death/kill, forget it.
5) Overt Leftist politics, hard no. Overt Rightist politics, there better be something else really good going on there too, or I’m out. Generally, politics sucks.
Then there is Rule 6, Don’t Bore Me.
It is -amazing- how many books there used to be that sailed through the Iron Rules without touching the sides, and lately there’s hardly anything. I call enemy action.
As to female authors vs. male authors, unless female/male is specified in the name, I can’t tell and therefore don’t care. I like Patricia A. McKillip. I can’t stand Nora Jemisin. It ain’t about the author’s personal characteristics.
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Aug 23, 2018 @ 13:10:56
I see Calvin is here playing CalvinBall again.
This thing I said that you objected too, Calvin: “Minorities are counted for political purposes, the ones doing the counting move the rules around to suit whatever their goal is on any particular day.”
Only -you- care if Sarah Hoyt, Larry Correia and JDA are or are not Hispanic, Calvin. Because -you- count up minorities. We don’t do that. Sarah, Larry and Jon are authors to us, not little political counters to get moved from one column to another based on whatever new rule has been constructed for expedience this week.
Hilariously, you people go to great lengths strip them of their minority status because of their stated political views. Almost as if everybody who is Conservative, even a little bit, suddenly becomes a White Anglo Saxon Protestant. That’s how we got “White Hispanic” George Zimmermann.
That’s why Sarah Hoyt is…
a) lily white
b)Hispanic
c)Latino
d)pen name for a racist white Mormon male
…depending on which Lefty jackass you talk to, which day of the week. Its the most horrific racism. (and it leads to what the hated Mr. Trump is tweeting about today, farms being seized from their owners because skin colour.)
She doesn’t care, and we don’t care. It is an evil, stupid, racist construct. To me she’s some lady that writes books I want to read. I don’t need to know if she has a tan.
But please, get back to the CalvinBall. Always entertaining to watch you turn into a pretzel. Go for the double back-flip into the salt tray.
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Oct 04, 2018 @ 14:05:14
As someone who isn’t invested in these conventions, and who is very tired of both liberals and conservatives, I find this all amusing.
I’ve been watching the mess since RaceFail and Mammoth Fail.
(fwiw, I actually agreed with the critics of Elizabeth Bear)
This years Wiscon had this little dust up:
Quote:
“During the Killable Bodies In SFF panel at WisCon this morning (Sunday), a panelist engaged in Nazi and Confederate apologia and also appeared to posit that disabled or injured people sometimes “have to be sacrificed.”
They continued this behavior even after the audience and other panel members expressed the harm this was causing them.”
They didn’t engage in apologia, they said characters should be written with depth, vs a cardboard villain.
It reminded me too, of the time Elizabeth Moon wrote a post in her Livejournal that criticized Muslims, (which I heartily agreed with)
and caused a huge scandal, and iirc, she was disinvited as a guest of honor.
That doesn’t surprise me.
Saying anything negative about the Religion of Pieces get you forever cast out of liberal heaven, even if you’re a victim of that religion, or an Ex Muslim.
And I bet our hapless Wiscon panel member had suggested writing ISIS terrorist with a sympathetic view, they’d be screaming how “woke” she was, lutz;
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Oct 04, 2018 @ 15:23:00
Some issues are just considered “transgressive” these days, if not by all, at least by some interest groups. In another blog, I commented on the 2015 Nazi romance For Such a Time and the issues it caused. There were bunches of crossed issues about Nazis written as sympathetic characters and Jewish heroines embracing Christianity, all set against the backdrop of the Holocaust. It turned into a huge, multicornered fracas in the Romance awards system. In other words, I don’t think the bullying is all just about Muslims.
Clue me in about Mammoth Fail, please. It hasn’t crossed my radar.
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Oct 04, 2018 @ 21:04:26
Mammoth Fail was about Patricia Wrede’s YA novel, The Thirteenth Child.
She wrote a book about America without the American Indians, and replaced them with Mammoths.
She pitched the idea on a Google Group, around 2006, and stated she hated the stereotypes of Indians as either savages or ecologists, so decided to just not include them.
The part that really got me was a little throw away line about the Indians “readying the land for human occupation.
(If I find the quote I will post it.)
THAT, to me, shows a terrible attitude about Native Americans.
I am friends with Indians, I lived near Mohawk land, and Wampanoag land, and still, to this day, Indians are being screwed over, esp the women.
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Oct 04, 2018 @ 21:45:41
Hm. I see what you mean. It’s like trying to rewrite history for kids, removing one of the big morality issues of the new world. It’s pretty much erased already, so why not go all the way?
Where did that come from about “human” occupation? Was that from the book? We know that Native American tribes are the people, right?
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Oct 04, 2018 @ 22:25:20
The human occupation comment was when she was kicking around the idea for the book in her Google group.
I’ll try to find it.
As you can see in the TOR link, it’s the usual commentators from Racefail.
Don’t get me wrong, I think they have good points, but they seem to think that it’s only white people that have commented genocide and colonization.
It gets old, fast, plus it makes me wonder how much world history they’ve studied, and NON American history.
They are very American centric, and assume the world thinks the same way, which is amusing to me.
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Oct 05, 2018 @ 12:03:07
Hm. Especially as I recall the complaints about RaceFail being how white people subvert everything to their viewpoint. America-centric is just another version of the same thing, regardless of who’s doing it.
America without Native Americans really is a weird concept, though. I see this book apparently included “Negroes.” Why not erase the African diaspora, too? Actually, if you’re going to do alternate history, the Americas could have easily been settled by the Vikings.
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Oct 04, 2018 @ 22:36:14
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.sf.composition/Ccyiy4w8heg%5B101-125%5D
Found it!!
I’m currently assuming there will be African slaves, possibly even more
(since there won’t be any Native Americans to have already done a certain
amount of prepping land for human occupation, nor to be exploited later).
I’m speculating that South America (which is outside the scope of the story
I’m doing, and therefore wide open for changes) will look *very* different.
Here is a LiveJournal that has a good break down of it.
https://elynross.livejournal.com/435519.html
Fwiw, my tastes in reading is Ruth Rendell, psychological suspense type novels.
Although I love Lord of the Rings, and a unsettling little book I, who has never known men, which is as close to SF as I get.
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Oct 05, 2018 @ 12:05:49
Like adventure stories? Try Wells’ Murderbot Diaries about extending the definition of “human.” I’ve just scheduled a review of the last novella in the current series. It’s highly recommended.
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Oct 05, 2018 @ 15:57:43
Thank you for the recommendation Ms. Buis!
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Oct 05, 2018 @ 16:50:16
Thanks for the comments. Interesting reading at your links!
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