Month: Dec 2015

2015 Not-a-Hugo for Best Cover

Dec 31, 2015

Following on from my last post. If there had been a Hugo for Best Book Cover what would have won? I’ve no idea of course! I’ve no way to properly survey what covers might have got nominated in that circumstance – particularly if covers of new editions of old books were eligible. And who knows in the era of Nutty Nuggets what covers the Puppies would have nominated.

So I’ll make my task easier. Of the books nominated, which had the best cover? I’ll include the withdrawn books also.

Here are the choices (by number of ‘Best Book’ nominations:

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Weapons, Nuggets, Hugos

Dec 31, 2015

On my review of Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons I gushed a bit about James Taylor’s cover art. Normally he has a post on his blog about his design process for a given cover but there wasn’t one there at the time I posted the review. Anyway, he does now have a long post about the stages and alternate designs that went into the cover and it is well worth a read: http://draw-board.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/a-psychochronography-in-chrome.html

Partly because as an excuse to draw stupid pictures and partly because of Brad Torgersen’s daft ‘Nutty Nuggets’ post and partly just because, I’ve been more interested in book covers of late. So here are some random musings.

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More Semiprozines

Dec 29, 2015

I’ll never get to look at all on the Semi-prozine directory at this rate! Certainly never going to get to look at many in depth 😦

So onto the Bs. Blackgate is apparently a Fanzine not a Semiprozine according to Matthew David Surridge who stopped by File770 for a chat. In a previous post I also knocked out Bastion and BlackStatic.

That leaves:

Bard and Sages: not much to go on from the website other than the general description and cover images.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies: A magazine specializing in secondary world fantasy fiction. Some nice stuff e.g. this story about an assassin having issues trying to assassinate somebody http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/a-killer-of-dead-men/
Was nominated (slate-free) for a Hugo in 2015.

Betwixt: The latest issue has this wonderfully creepy eco-horror story called Thirst http://betwixtmagazine.com/thirst-by-leanne-olson/ a story strong enough to make me want to read more of the magazine.

The Book Smugglers: oh, nominated in 2014 for best FANzine. So off the semiprozine list.
I wrote to The Book Smugglers and they say they are a Semiprozine – so hoorah for them 🙂 Primarily a review site for SF and YA fiction.

Bull Spec: The site has an active and regular review blog with a varied selection of books reviewed. Magazine is primarily regular columns and reviews.

Ha! Bs defeated!

Poor Brad Loses His Rag

Dec 28, 2015

Brad Torgersen’s failed to bully people into voting for his picks and now he is crying about it quite loudly.

After George R. R. Martin offered an olive branch to Sad Puppies 4 if maybe they could tone down the insults and focus on books, Brad has responded with an acronym-filled and acrimonious response that demonstrates, once again, that Sad Puppies had no enemy more effective at making the campaign look foolish and petulant than Brad himself.

Here is a taste:

I bring all of this up, however, to demonstrate — for George, and any other onlookers — that there have been some horrendously poor decisions made on his “side” of the fracas. And until or unless some accounting is made for these horrendously poor decisions, I can’t see attempts at reconciliation — with the Sad Puppies — producing much fruit. Because almost nobody on the Sad Puppies side has ever received anything like an apology that is worth a damn. Far from it. What Sad Puppies gets, is being blamed for Rabid Puppies, and being treated like the Rabids and the Sads are no different from each other. It’s Putin bombing the Syrian opposition, to get at ISIS. Putin doesn’t give a damn because Putin only cares about Assad, just as the 2,500-member block bombers and CHORFholers only cared about “defending” the Hugos — from people who have just as much right to participation, as anyone else who’s in this field.

Many Sad Puppies find Vox Day and the Rabids to be revolting. It didn’t save any of the Sad Puppies from being treated as synonymous with the Rabids — which is (again) exactly what Vox wanted. And, to be truthful, it’s what many CHORFs wanted too. As long as the CHORFs don’t have to reckon with Sad Puppies honestly — as long as Vox gives the CHORFs an excuse to be zealously hateful toward all things even remotely canine — the CHORFs will happily use that excuse, and hate with a clear conscience.

Hmm, Brad fails to mention that one of the chief sources of confusion between the two campaigns (Sad and Rabid) was Brad himself, nor does Brad make much (if any) attempt to make any distinction between the huge number of different people, groups, types of fans and websites that made up all the many different kinds of people who in some way (and in various ways) opposed the two Puppy campaigns.

Nope. Instead the supposed ‘dignity culture’ plays the victim card again and demands that everybody else show him the standard of behavior he repeatedly fails to employ.

The good news for the Puppies is that Brad isn’t in charge of Sad Puppies 4. Hopefully 2016 will see less ‘crybully’ tactics. In the meantime Brad can continue to rail at the THOUSANDS of fans who he has deemed to be somehow wrong in their tastes and demand that the ‘establishment’ apologize to him for all his hurt feelings.