What’s the word on the big wide sea?

I’ve hopped into my boat and hoisted the sail and set off on my navigation of the archipelagos to listen to what can be heard on the many Isles of Interest. The answer is: nothing much.

The Hugo Awards have moved on from the pups both melancholic and hydrophobic but have the pups moved on from the Hugos? Based on the overall reaction: yes. The two major organs of the two Puppy campaigns of yesteryear have remained silent on the topic aside from brief references in the comment section.  That’s healthy for them.

I count around eleven finalists who Vox Day has ranted about by name before (+/- a couple I guess) but given the highly visible presence of John Scalzi and N.K.Jemisin on the list, if he was going to have a rant about the Hugo finalists it would be those two. The Hugos are being studiously ignored at the Rabid end.

The newer Scrappy-Doo element was more overt about the nomination announcement but that has been well covered elsewhere.

Maybe then they have all moved on emotionally as well as functionally?

Oh, not quite.

A Felapton Towers intern points towards a Facebook post by not-at-still-bitter Larry Correia: https://www.facebook.com/larry.correia/posts/2109322645745320

“If I had made up a fake April Fools Day list of Hugo noms trying to point out what an insular, inbred, political circle jerk they are, turns out it wouldn’t have looked much different from the real one.”

Magnanimous in defeat as always…

The comments follow the usual canards: “It’s all Tor!” and Scalzi bashing.

Some highlights:

“Dave Truesdale Social, political and gender views trump literary quality. Many in various Arts fields tend to be liberal in the first place. You layer in the infiltration of the current far Left political views currently overwhelming society at large and SF in particular and these folks will stick together come hell or high water. They smother anything not in line with their views, talk and chat online together, stick together at cons, and you end up with a built-in, ready-made “informal” bloc of like-minded awards voters.”

“Dave Truesdale And yes, as Richard D. Cartwright says, Tor buys a lot of advertising each year, AND they get reviewed and promoted for free in the most widely read genre and media outlets who are also sympatico with their Leftist worldview. And they also buy memberships for their large staff (don’t know if everyone at Tor get a paid membership from Tor’s budget or not, but I imagine a lot of them do, which are solid Tor votes nevertheless).”

I presume people who attend Worldcon in a professional capacity on behalf of a publisher would get their membership paid, just as I assume self-employed writers would treat con attendance as a work expense. Aside from that, I find the idea of Tor paying willy-nilly for a bunch of employees to get voting memberships highly unlikely (happy to be shown to be wrong on the basis of some actual evidence). I would have hoped David Truesdale would only make such claims on the strength of something more than “I imagine” but it seems I’d have hoped wrongly.

Meanwhile, Brad T hasn’t mellowed either:

“Brad Torgersen, I had forgotten that today is the day the list comes out. Wow, yeah, it would be difficult to parody this list, because the list itself is a parody. Basically, if you publish with TOR, Orbit, put stories thru TOR-dot-com, or that SJZ mag Uncanny, and are female, you’re gonna get a Hugo nom.

Clearly, when we pointed out that the Hugos are a politically-strangled award increasingly dominated by identity politics, we didn’t sufficiently state the scope of the problem! ;)”

It is fascinating that somebody who said that what they really cared about was the quality of the stories rather than the group-identification of writers continues to complain NOT about the quality of the stories but about the group-identification of the writers.

Finally, Sarah Hoyt returns to an old and debunked complaint:

“Sarah A. Hoyt Yes, but you guys miss the point. the point of their getting the Hugos is that the universities many of them teach at don’t know how corrupt the award is, and will be impressed by it in their resume. Period. Full stop. Readers have nothing to do with this.

Richard D. Cartwright Sarah, so you are saying that the Hugos have degenerated into a university cv puffing award?

Sarah A. Hoyt Richard D. Cartwright yep. That’s why they fought so hard. it’s their livelihood at stake.”

I can’t see many academics in the list (Puppy fantasies about me notwithstanding), although one book in Best Related Work is from a university press and one Fan Writer is a PhD student/Research Fellow (but not in a literary discipline or one were a Hugo nomination would carry any weight). There could be more with some academic aspect but it’s clear few (maybe zero) Hugo finalists over the past years are overtly using that status to further academic careers. The very nature of Hoyt’s claim implies that such finalists wouldn’t be promoting themselves *secretly* in this way. It is a fantasy of Hoyt’s that she has mistaken for fact.

So time has not yet healed old wounds and grudges remain fueled by fantasies. However, the noise has lessened and the urge to distance themselves from the failures of half a decade has moved them on somewhat.