Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

Oh, you ate all that Sad Popcorn already and you wanted a bit more?

OK then – to the microwave! Let the water-cooler gossip of the fringes of fandom continue!

Sarah Hoyt has replied to Brian N on Facebook (but using the ‘don’t mention who you are talking about’ protocol) https://www.facebook.com/sarah.a.hoyt/posts/10210097267296418?pnref=story

“To whom it may concern: People are you out of your minds, actually?
I did not say people who won the dragon the first year were “small time authors.” Yeah, because, you know, I would totally call Larry Correia a small time author. If I were tripping LSD HARD.

What I said is that it was stupid to campaign hard for nominations. Some people snagged them last year on the “campaign hard” model and got into the finalist slots. That’s because it was the first year. BUT even in the first year they didn’t have enough votes to win. And this is going to get WAY harder as more people become aware of the award.

As of RIGHT NOW I’m not big enough to win (unless I way misjudge my place in the game.) I MIGHT have enough people who read my book to nominate me, but I don’t have enough people who’ve read it TO WIN.

So? So, going after awards is a mug’s game. I’m keeping my head down and writing more and better, and you should too.

And that’s the whole of my opinion, and you people need to take a chill pill. I’m at a con and working on a novel, and I don’t have time for this sh*t.”

I mean, she is maybe more right than wrong here but…well I’m finding it hard to reconcile this insight with everything else said over the past few years. Ho hum. As for the details what she specifically said was: “The Dragon is bigger than any of us. Some small names got in last year, but they were just because it was the first time. Right now I’m not big enough for the dragons, and I doubt any who covet it are either. “

As for the Dragon Awards, their ethos seems to be very much campaign hard. e.g http://awards.dragoncon.org/banners/

Or in their candidate FAQ:

Is it okay to push my fans to vote for me?

Yes, the Dragon Awards are a fan choice, and it is perfectly acceptable for you to encourage your fans to vote for you.

So, hmmm. Yup Hoyt’s right to be sceptical of all this scrappy-dooness, and I think right that the Dragon Awards really need more appropriate winners that Brian Neimmeier’s book was, but…what she is saying does seem to be at odds with the way the Dragon Awards are pitching themselves.

Anyway, as far as I can tell all the main players in this minor flap are all at LibertyCon.

camestrosfelapton

61 responses to “Oh, you ate all that Sad Popcorn already and you wanted a bit more?”

  1. I can find absolutely no fault in this statement on its own.

    Maybe she’s actually learned? “writing more and better” is the way to both increase sales and get awards. Kerfuffling takes a lot of time and energy away from the work.

    LibertyCon must be a whole lot of fun this year. Without a government to bitch about, they’ve got nothing to do but turn on each other, and many of the feuders are there in the same room. And some of ’em are packing. o_O I hope BN isn’t there.

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          • According to the website, CUL is an Also Appearing author.

            Finn’s bio says he is one of a legion of writers over at The Catholic Geeks blog — and then he proceeds to explain the definition of “legion”. 🙄

            JdA’s bio says he holds a reputation for being the Dean Martin of science fiction conventions — apparently he thinks being a falling-down drunk is something to brag about?

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      • I’ve been to every SF con in the SF Bay area in the past N years, and I looked at the picture of JdA and I swear I’ve never seen him before. Or heard of him. He’s no famous raconteur/singer, but I can’t speak to whether he’s a falling-down drunk. Bros like him often are. He’s as much like Dean Martin as he is the leading Hispanic SF writer.

        CUL has stayed out of the Puppy infighting, at least this go-round. I don’t remember him doing much other than being crazy and SWATting Worldcon (Sasquan made a big mistake not throwing him out for that; I don’t care that Gerrold was the bigger man and accepted the nonpology). He hasn’t turned on his own AFAIK.

        What do you do for a con if you live in Chattanooga and aren’t a religious right-wing milSF person? Go to some other city, I guess. That’s too bad for the liberals who live there.

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    • Yes, considering that Liberty Con has the IMO idiotic policy to allow people to carry weapons on site, I worry about what might happen there.

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    • Problem is the lack of goal again: I guess most puppies did start the award to win prices for themselves. Hoyt may actually wanted to started a decent award (aimed at conservatives) that actually meant something. These goals are not very inclusive.

      An award does need time to gain reputation. But if the reputation is “The guys running/indorsing it will always win” the reach of said award will be small.
      (Too bad for the board game category – maybe the only shot I ever have to win a SF-award 😉 )

      Liked by 1 person

      • Well, Sarah Hoyt has won the Prometheus Award, which is a respectable award for whatever the organisers deem Libertarian science fiction. For the rest of the puppies except maybe Larry Correia, the highly gameable Dragon is the only award they ever have any hope of winning.

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      • I checked the records. In his Campbell year, Larry finished dead last. Brad finished second.

        The Prometheus Award is pretty respectable, even if socialist Scotsmen win it fairly often. AFAIK, nobody’s gamed that one, so it’s got integrity. It’s a pretty good recommendation for those circles and would help a book it’s blazoned on.

        But the indie-only Pups only have hopes for the cheatable Dragons. Hoyt, LC, BT all get published by those “dying Marxist” dead-tree companies. You know, the ones that actually make money and get read.

        Hoyt wants and has received an actual respectable award against genuine competition.
        The boys just want an shiny award any way they can get it. Participation trophies.
        Peer’s right, these goals aren’t the same.

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      • I’m not surprised that Larry finished last in the Campbell Award. He had strong competition, Lauren Beukes, Saladin Ahmed, Lev Grossman, and the Monster Hunter books aren’t really the sort of thing Hugo voters tend to go for. Brad was also up against pretty strong competition and he only had a few short stories, though recall that one of them was quite good.

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  2. According to the web page, which may not be up to date:

    Jonny D is there, with a typically egotistical and untrue bio.
    Declan’s there.
    Sarah and Mr. Sarah are there.
    Tank Marmot, who’s stayed out of it.
    Oh John Ringo No, ditto.
    Toni Weisskopf, who true to Baen editing, misspells Larry C’s last name in her bio.
    Our old pal Michael Z.
    Dawn Witzke, who’s been active in this latest brouhaha, insulting Sarah.

    No Brian N, or if he is there, he isn’t listed as an actual author guest.
    No Russell listed.

    No LC, BT, or JCW.

    So perhaps not as awkward as it could be?
    Apparently Declan wouldn’t recognize awkward if it bit him, so as long as he and Dawn stay away from Sarah, it’s cool.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. I just realized nominations for the Dragon Award closed one week ago. I didn’t see any fanfare about that. Nothing about it on Reddit. Nothing from this year on Google.

    Is this thing deliberately not publicized?

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    • Nomination deadline is 7/24/17 from http://application.dragoncon.org/dc_fan_awards_nominations.php

      As far as publicity goes it’s probably just extremely disorganized. It’s held at DragonCon but appears not to be run by DragonCon. How it’s run or who is on the board of it appears not to be public information. Which is kind of ironic when you think of how much effort went into exposing how the Hugos are owned by WorldCon and voted on by WorldCon members, a thing that has never been in question and they’re super transparent about the process. If it’s just a couple of people who are writers managing it they’re likely organizing their con schedule and working and have a hard time managing to do any of the standard work related to promoting on what might ultimately is a side project. Like SPV those involved wouldn’t want to hand control of it off to other volunteers because they might use it to self promote in a different way than those before were using it to self promote. Plus if they managed to get a lot of people involved there’s no way they’d be able to have friendly hashtag battles over if they’re going to give the award to JCW or his wife. Instead it would likely look a lot closer to the Goodread’s Choice Awards.

      Liked by 1 person

    • Oops. I got June and July confused. Sorry about that!

      Still, I’m surprised that the people who actually run Dragon Con are willing to let themselves be used like this. As you say, it seems pretty obvious that it’s a scam a few people are running to make it look like their works actually won a prestigious award.

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      • I’m currently collating who has been posting recommendations or promoting voting for the Dragons. So far it is pretty thin aside from the Rabids and Declan F

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      • We would do so at Rocket Stack Rank if they had any short-fiction categories. Because the Dragons have this odd eligibility cycle that runs from July to July, people really do need help figuring out what’s eligible, so we could add value that way.

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    • But looking at it the registration to vote on the nominees closed 6/28? But you can still nominate until 7/24 and your email used in the nomination process also registers you to vote even though registration to vote has been closed. WTF.

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    • That’s because you don’t have to submit all your nominees at once. You can’t change any nominee once you’ve sent it in, but you can add new ones. So if you already signed up but didn’t finish nominating, you’ve got until 7/24, but if you haven’t signed up at all, then you’re SOL.

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      • Ah makes, more sense. Well then what you said originally is correct, if a person hasn’t registered at all by this point they’re not going to be able to nominate. I don’t know if the people even advocating their works realize that as many continue to still direct people to the main page without informing them that it’s too late to register to nominate/vote if they haven’t already.

        Which sort of seems like an important thing to mention to people you’re trying to get to nominate you. Maybe they didn’t realize it either! What a cluster.

        Liked by 1 person

    • I actually managed to nominate for the Dragon Awards this year, because why should they puppies have all the fun to themselves? Though I left the game categories blank, since I have no idea what to put there.

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  5. At this rate the Dragon is going to be so feces-smeared within a few years that the (coveted) Balrog Awards are going to have a better reputation…

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    • At this rate, the Hogus are going to be counted as prestigious.

      (I was nominated for the Balrog! If you look at the winners, they’re actually pretty reasonable.)

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      • [quote] If you look at the winners, they’re actually pretty reasonable.[/quote]

        I know. It’s kind of eerie.

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  6. I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that the fallout among these authors is coming around the same time as a bunch of various alt-right groups have also fallen into infighting. Or maybe it’s just the logical conclusion of mostly leaderless poorly defined anger brigades whose figureheads all have different ideas of what they’re angry about and the moment they disagree set out to discredit the person disagreeing with the same ambiguous prerogatives used for all non-True Believers (like SJW, cuck, Marxist, Beta, CHORF, SMOF, etc).

    Writing more and better rather than focus on awards is some of the best writing advice she could give though. Accolades don’t pay the bills, don’t help refine your craft and don’t get the next book out the door.

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    • What I call the ‘conservative crisis’ has only intensified – i.e. the lack of direction and cohesive ideas needed to maintain a political movement. They only have opposition mode and/or do what rich people tell them to do left.

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      • Which shows they were reactionary in two senses of the word.

        I mean, they’ve got all 3 branches of the US government, and the UK government and Brexit. The alt-right is being taken seriously. Shouldn’t this be a high-flying good time for them? Whooping it up with all that power?

        But no. Without “da ebil libruls” to oppose, they’ve got nothing in common. So now they have to “purify” their ranks and start taking out their own — and they seem to be true to form, taking on women, immigrant Hoyt.

        @Matt Y: No less a personage than actual Rabid Puppy editor Pournelle has always said “Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money.”

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      • @camestros – Yeah the neoreactionary movement is odd. Only existing as an opposing force means not having a true identity aside from just against someone else.

        I found the discussion in your link to cause severe eye rolling without a warning, such as Lamplighter ‘but I don’t think that it was because Sad Puppies campaigned for the Dragons. I think it was because it provided the wonderful, wonderful service that we have needed for some time…an alternate to the Locus Recommended Reading List.

        I think such a list is greatly needed…all awards aside. Superversive SF has been wanting to organize such a yearly list since 2014. It’s one of our goals. We just haven’t been to the point where we could do it before now.’

        Putting together a f’n list is something so difficult that it’s taken three years for it to still be a goal? Maybe get advice from a Cracked article writer because lists seem to be their thing and easy to do. I guess a list would be positively promoting works and is not as easy as saying others aren’t doing the work. I’m not even against such a list, I like recommendation lists! But the idea that the Sad Puppies campaigned just to provide an alternative list to the Locus Recommended Reading List, a goal never mentioned by them, requires a suspension of disbelief that makes me doubt I’d enjoy her fiction. Also Locus provides a list of upcoming all upcoming SFF.

        @Lurkertype – I like that quote, shame his wagon is hitched to a clown car with no brakes.

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      • The trouble with making lists like Locus does is that they would actually have to do a lot of reading. As we have seen, though, their movement is entirely about the politics of the authors–it has nothing to do with the content of the works, and so actually reading anything is 100% against their principles.

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      • @Matt Y: But now that Pournelle’s gone full Puppy, they ought to be worshiping his Holy Writ, right? He’s always described himself as politically “to the right of Attila the Hun”, always written milSF, and has all the sales and all the awards. I dunno, his past willingness to be cordial to liberals might count against him — or it might just be that the Pups haven’t read enough published before 2000 to know how important he was to the field.

        I’d like to point out that everyone who nominates for the Hugos, or the Locus list, manages to come up with a list every single year. It’s not that hard! It shouldn’t take 3 years to “hope” you could get a list together. Even if you just mention the few books you read and your fellow travelers wrote, there’s a list. Boom.

        I got my Worldcon membership too late this year to nominate (so I didn’t have a list ready), but I probably could have come up with full slots in Novel, Short Story, BDP Long, and Series, and one or two in most of the other categories if I’d had a week’s notice.

        Buzzfeed cranks out hundreds of lists every day. I can’t even count how many they’d do in 3 years.

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      • I’d like to point out that everyone who nominates for the Hugos, or the Locus list, manages to come up with a list every single year. It’s not that hard! It shouldn’t take 3 years to “hope” you could get a list together.

        The Pups seem to have a hard time doing things that other people are able to do without too much trouble. Any project the Pups take up seems to be constantly delayed by angst and breast-beating anguish.

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      • @Greg – If they make lists that aren’t reliant on the content but just the political affiliation of the author that should make putting together a list even easier! But you’re right I hadn’t considered the reading into the work of the list, but that’s the fun part.

        @Lurkertype – Heck even if a person doesn’t want to do a lot of work it doesn’t take much time to put together a list on Goodreads and just push out a link to it The BN Blog does one monthly I usually check out, and to be fair Castalia House did one as well for June using the same format as the BN Blog, which shows that even people who no qualms about working for a human bot fly can put in effort required.

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      • Ahem, I do a round-up of new indie SFF releases every month on my blog and the Speculative Fiction Showcase and have been doing this for two and a half years now. I have one for indie mysteries and thrillers as well. It’s a bit of work, but not too much, if you plan it properly.

        BTW, I noticed that Castalia House had a round-up of new and properly pulp revolutionary indie SF as well. Well, the more the merrier.

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  7. Sarah Hoyt: “Yesterday I had a brain storm and I thought: Awards. (I also made a typo, the rest of you — infants — have been having WAY too much fun with.) Before you pelt me with rubber rolls – even two years ago, I’d have been the first to say “oh, not awards, they’re SOOOOOOO stuffy.” But the thing is in indie publishing, and in all publishing as it moves to Amazon and other electronic venues, being able to put on the cover a little seal that says “winner of the blah blah award” (we’re not calling it a blah blah award. No, you can’t talk me into it.) does give you a huge leg up. Most of the readers who are rediscovering SF (or anything else) because they can finally find stuff they want to read, see the Hugo and it doesn’t say to them “Award given by small group of people who attend Worldcon.” They see “Award” which means someone other than the author’s cat read this masterpiece and approved of – or at least finished—it. That means they’re twice as likely to buy it.”

    Also Sarah Hoyt: “As of RIGHT NOW I’m not big enough to win (unless I way misjudge my place in the game.) I MIGHT have enough people who read my book to nominate me, but I don’t have enough people who’ve read it TO WIN. So? So, going after awards is a mug’s game. I’m keeping my head down and writing more and better, and you should too.”

    I’m confused. Is going after awards a mug’s game unless you create the award for yourself so that you can have an “award” seal on your book? I actually do agree with her later sentiment, though I don’t have a problem with authors reminding people that they have stuff out for a year that is eligible for award nominations. That’s basic PR info, not extensive campaigning. But awards, whether it’s a voting community like WorldCon’s Hugos, or a jury/judge committee, or a public online voting offering like the Gemmells or the Dragons, always has a changeable block of voters each year. And you really don’t know what they will do, so there’s not much point in trying to chase after them. You just remind them that your work exists and if they liked it, they’ll decide what they’re going to do about that regarding awards.

    The key thing about awards is that they aren’t the marketing bonus that they think they are. Fiction readers are marketing resistant. Short fiction readers are even more so. Having a seal that says award on your work or your author name can help in making people aware of your work — that’s what the awards are all for — which then may interest them to check it out. But all you get is a boost of awareness that can lead to word of mouth. You’re not guaranteed sales, a positive reaction from those who check out your stuff or good and effective word of mouth just because you won an award or got a nomination in the fiction field.

    And while sales popularity certainly can help sway whatever is the current crop of voters in a year, it’s not the criteria that a lot of fiction readers use because again they are marketing resistant. They are deliberately, most of them, not particularly impressed that a work gets a lot of sales, ads, etc., (unlike how marketing works with other fashion and entertainment products to try and make something seem fashionable and big.) That may in fact be a reason for them to avoid it. Instead, they use their own personal word of mouth networks and personal interests — and you don’t necessarily know what those are going to be even if you try to organize voting blocks. So it is a mug’s game.

    Right now, the Dragon Award only gives a small amount of awareness/recognition, as it is new. So if they really want to increase that, you don’t campaign to get your work nominated and winning — you campaign to get the award itself more widely known, whoever might get it, so that more people come to vote. And the easiest way to do that for the Dragon Award, is to get the giant convention that sponsors it more involved and more willing to promote it. That doesn’t seem to be happening yet. But it may. But fighting over the awards themselves is a waste of their time and always has been.

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    • Twilight, Fifty Shades of Gray — incredibly popular. Wildly successful, made into movies.

      And yet, does anyone who fancies themself a real author want to be in that company, quality-wise? Do people who read a lot of books for pleasure like them? Have they won any prestigious awards?

      Of course not. Like @Kat G said “That may in fact be a reason for them to avoid it.”

      I’m not sure I know what my point was here, other than to agree with Kat. It’s the weekend, I’m not required to think.

      I will note that in that statement, Hoyt’s inadvertently made the case for the “SJW” side:
      “Most of the readers who are rediscovering SF because they can finally find stuff they want to read”

      I can’t count the number of people who are getting into (or back into) SF now that it’s not all about SWM being Manly and shooting stuff in outer space and conquering, with no internal monologue. Nowadays sometimes the protagonist is a girl, or gay, or a PoC, and there are feelings involved. People who were put off by the “Boys’ Own, Golden Age of SF is 12” style are really thankful to find NK Jemisin, Hao Jingfang, Wes Chu, Ann Leckie, MRK, Cat Valente, Saladin Ahmed, et al.

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  9. Out of context I suppose but I don’t want to post the whole comment thread from Sarah Hoyt’s Facebook thread.

    Sarah A. Hoyt ” I didn’t say either, actually. Awards are fine, if they’re organic. People love your stuff, they give you an award, great. if you have to actually campaign, you’re not going to be big enough to win the Dragon. Probably this year, already. Maybe forever.”

    Ummmm

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        • Yup but I think Sarah Hoyt now gets that the award will have no value if that continues. She doesn’t want to say ‘whats the point of awards that the Rabid Puppies control’ because the issue would become too obvious…

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      • You might as well ask what’s the point of Beale’s ridiculous wikipedia ripoff. The point is Teddy Beale’s black hole of an ego gets fed.

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      • How is Teddypedia doing, anyway? Wasn’t it supposed to put Wiki out of business by now?

        “Awards are fine, if they’re organic.” I think that’s as close as Hoyt can come to saying “The Dragons are useless and don’t actually recognize quality; everyone realizes they’re another Rabid Puppy scam.” She doesn’t want to start any more trouble, she’s getting enough crap from the boys as it is. She ought to make it her last word on the subject — but won’t IMO.

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      • It’s limping along, making comically little progress, with only a handful of mods making changes, frequently on bizarre subjects that interest only them.

        And to be fair, Beale was remarkably vague about the ‘when’ of wikipedia’s upcoming demise. It wouldn’t do to pull a William Miller, after all.

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