A reference post of things too tabular to contain within the next chapter.
In the last chapter I covered the announcement of Sad Puppies 3. In the comments to that thread, Brad crowd-sourced suggestions for the forthcoming slate. I’ve done a rough compilation of those suggestions here and semi-cleaned them up https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_6mfGeQcRYvNUXt5BOuE-v7TeVEUUbTrOi6TR18GDR4/edit?usp=sharing
Because people didn’t necessarily mention categories or check word counts for short fiction or check eligibility etc, I’ve only given rough categories eg “short” means anything other than an obvious novel. Likewise, I haven’t distinguished editor or BDP length. A number of anthologies were suggested, which wasn’t necessarily ignorance about Hugo categories as they are an obvious source of short fiction ideas but for convenience, as some anthologies were suggested as possible Best Related Work, I’ve thrown them all in there for ease of counting.
66 people were suggested, most of them just the once. The top picks (at least 2 suggestions) were:
| John C. Wright | 14 |
| Jason Rennie | 7 |
| Thomas A Mays | 6 |
| Larry Correia | 5 |
| Brandon Sanderson | 5 |
| Jim Butcher | 4 |
| Jack Campbell | 4 |
| Joshua Young | 4 |
| Toni Weisskopf | 3 |
| Andy Weir | 3 |
| Vox Day | 2 |
| Lou Antonelli | 2 |
| Kevin J Anderson | 2 |
| Ken Burnside | 2 |
| James L. Cambias | 2 |
| Charles Gannon | 2 |
| Drew Hayes | 2 |
Works suggested (with less than 2 suggestions filtered out)
| Categories | Work | Author | COUNTA of Link |
| Artist Total | 2 | ||
| BDP | Interstellar | 4 | |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | 2 | ||
| BDP Total | 14 | ||
| BRW | The Hot Equations | Ken Burnside | 2 |
| BRW Total | 9 | ||
| Campbell Total | 2 | ||
| editor | Sci Phi Journal | Jason Rennie | 5 |
| Baen | Toni Weisskopf | 3 | |
| editor Total | 13 | ||
| fan works | Sci Phi Show | Jason Rennie | 2 |
| fan works Total | 9 | ||
| graphic Total | 2 | ||
| novel | Skin Game | Jim Butcher | 4 |
| The Martian | Andy Weir | 3 | |
| The Lost Fleet | Jack Campbell | 3 | |
| Monster Hunter Nemesis | Larry Correia | 3 | |
| Judge of Ages | John C. Wright | 3 | |
| Trial by Fire | Charles Gannon | 2 | |
| A Sword Into Darkness | Thomas A Mays | 2 | |
| novel Total | 48 | ||
| semipro Total | 2 | ||
| short | Domo | Joshua Young | 4 |
| One Bright Star To Guide Them | John C. Wright | 3 | |
| The Plural Helen of Troy | John C. Wright | 2 | |
| Queen of the Tyrant Lizards | John C. Wright | 2 | |
| Island in a Sea of Stars | Kevin J Anderson | 2 | |
| short Total | 37 | ||
| Grand Total | 139 |
People with long memories will see the beginnings of a sketch of the eventual SP3 slate there.
How do these compare with the actual Sp3 slate? The first question to ask is ‘which SP3 slate?’
I think there are maybe four versions. Unfortunately, I don’t have the very first version that Brad put out but by looking at reposts and archives I’ve collated some versions at different dates. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mozMBDZayTw2Kd0APAsFDjX4KpFbr3iKxFP3WCqBve4/edit?usp=sharing
I have arranged it so the same things appear on the same line but that means changing the order they were presented in. The Rabid Puppies slate in particular, had a deliberate re-ordering to make certain nominees more prominent.
BPD-long is oddly stable and derived from suggestions. I don’t know why they bothered though, except for completeness. The only interesting suggestion was the indie film Coherence.
BDP short was a complete mess. The agenda I suppose was to oust Doctor Who but Game of Thrones wasn’t exactly a contrarian suggestion. The brilliant tacticians at ELoE HQ probably shouldn’t have bothered.
There were only two suggestions for Best Graphic Story both of which were better than the eventual SP3 pick. Again, tactically, strategically, they’d have been better leaving it blank. This was the biggest unforced error of Sad Puppies 3 and was simply handing their opponents a rhetorical stick to be beaten with.
Best Related Work had a number of suggestions but this was another category where the smart thing to do even on a cynical, trollish ‘make liberal heads explode’ strategy was to just pick ONE thing: Ken Burnside’s The Hot Equations. Better written than the others and included in Vox Day’s Castalia House, Riding the Red Horse anthology and yet very Baenish and MilSF. The rest were a mix of dull, bad, wrong and objectionable in ways that helped discredit the whole enterprise.
I’ll have more analysis and speculation in the proper chapter.
I should add, Domo by Josh Young (Sci-Phi Journal #1) wasn’t terribly original but it was a decent read and there are worst examples of do-robots-have-souls out there. Instead, Antonelli’s dull On a Spiritual Plain ended up on the slate, also from Sci-Phi journal. Why? I’m speculating but possibly because it has a lot in common with Opera Vita Aeterna, Vox Day’s 2014 Hugo finalist (an elf rather than a robot but both have conversations with priests about god etc). Bonus speculation: in addition to the Puppies not wanting to run the same theme again (possible) maybe Vox Day didn’t want it included because it covers a similar theme as his earlier story but does it a lot better.
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“a mix of dull, bad, wrong and objectionable in ways that helped discredit the whole enterprise”
The Debarkle in one line. Bravo!
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Or even shorter: “A mix of dull, bad, wrong, and objectionable.”
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I note that the Martian got a few recommendations, which kind of makes the fact that Brad left it off all the more egregious. His defense, as I recall, was that he wasn’t aware of the novel at the time, and the fact that there were recommendations for it when he went crowdsourcing kind of puts the lie to that claim.
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Not quite. They were keen on the novel but it was ineligible. What they didn’t understand was that Weir was eligible for the Campbell.
After, when it was pointed out that they had kept Weir off the ballot, Brad claimed that the non-Puppies were unaware of the Novel.
{I can’t remember if that was an argument with Snowcrash or Mark Kitteh but I think it was one of them}
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camestrosfelapton: After, when it was pointed out that they had kept Weir off the ballot, Brad claimed that the non-Puppies were unaware of the Novel.
There was a little more to it than that. BT left The Martian off the slate because a bunch of Worldcon members had pointed out that it was ineligible due to its earlier self-publication.
Then, when Worldcon members pointed out that the Puppies had kept Andy Weir off the Campbell ballot, BT came out with the accusation that it was Worldcon members’ fault for not being aware of and nominating it for Best Novel back when it was eligible (due to being self-published). Of course, none of the Puppies had been aware of the novel then, either, or promoted it for awards, so BT was blaming Worldcon members for the same thing of which he and the rest of the Puppies were also guilty.
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Something have never understood is why the Puppies felt they needed to make a slate that covered all categories. If they had limited themselves to, say, six categories, they’d have made their lives a lot easier.
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Absolutely. Correia in particular talked a lot about strategy but wasting time and energy on BDP etc wasn’t smart
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Hugos uber alles?
BDP Long always leans towards the popular/populist anyway. Look at all the Star Warses and Marvels that have won; even more nominated.
But then we wouldn’t have had the amusement of Bradders complaining that da culch’rul eeleet ignored Avengers, six months after it won by a landslide.
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