I’ve not seen anybody try to do this on the right-hand lane of fandom for awhile. L Jagi Lamplighter is compiling a great big list of 2020 SFF works on the Superversive blog. Sensibly she is keeping it low-tech. People put suggestions in the comments and then periodically she’ll update the list on the blog. The intent is to help people find books but also provide some suggestions for the Dragon Award.
Coming this month (and probably for most of the year) is “Debarkle”, a history of the Puppy Kerfuffle of 2015, the events that preceded it, the political context and how it presaged events in US politics that followed it.
What follows is the draft section and chapter order. Naturally, what will actually happen is something different from this but this is the outline I’m working to.
Roughly it is in chronological order but with various chapters flashing forward or flashing backwards to keep themes together. External politics events are also a key part of this story, some of which will get their own chapters but in other cases they will be referenced in more fannish chapters to give context and establish time periods. Sadly, a lot of those external political events are violent ones but they are ones relevant to the times and also the discussions and the political atmosphere.
There are some special recurring chapters:
Dramatis Personae: these chapters look at backstories to some recurring names or groups in the story. I’ve tried to keep these to a minimum but if I find that I’m writing longer paragraphs about the background to given person, I may split that off into an extra one of these. Generally, they’ll cover the ‘story so far’ up to that point. So, John Scalzi and Vox Day (and maybe the Nielsen Hayden’s) get early chapters before the opening act of this http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/006122.html. So these chapters don’t all end up in section 1, many people will appear in the main narrative before they get one of these chapters but with a briefer introduction.
Meanwhile: these chapters cover things away from the main Puppy story but which, again, would otherwise become long intruding paragraphs of context. An obvious example is RaceFail 2009, which involved no puppies but did involve notable people in fandom. Likewise, a discussion of the 2015 Hugo awards can’t avoid discussion of RequiresHate and the Mixon report. You can skip these if you want to stick to the main plot. Part 6, covering 2020, is all Meanwhile.
Some book reviews: With the Hugosauriad I was pleased with how the two chapters looking at If You Were a Dinosaur My Love and the right-wing reaction to it worked out. The Debarkle is about many things but one of those things is stories. Currently these reviews will include Monster Hunter International, Redshirts, Ancillary Justice and the Broken Earth Trilogy, as well as some selected shorter fiction.
Speaking of the Hugosauriad, because that project contains chapters on Rachel Swirsky’s story and on Chuck Tingle, neither will get their own chapter in Debarkle. Obviously, both will get discussed but the longer coverage is in the Hugosauriad.
Currently, the plan is 6 sections.
Beginnings 1880 to 2010. All the background and setting the scene.
2011 to 2014. This covers the SFWA conflicts and the first two Sad Puppy campaigns but also looks at Gamergate.
2015. This section is the most chronological and most chapters cover events in a given month up to the smoky skies of Sasquan. “Phew!” we all say in August, “Looks like we defeated fascism for good this time!” and Donald Trump enters stage right.
2016-2017. Two parallel stories – the political story with the alt-right and Donald Trump and also the story of how the Puppy campaigns fizzled out. SP4, the non-event of SP5, the Dragon Awards and how Larry finally gets his participation prize.
2018-2019. Follows the political story with some delves back into fandom. Specifically this is the politics of Sad and Rabid versions of the right in the age of Trump. The crappiest gate aka ‘Comicsgate’ will get a look in, as will the 2019 Nebulas, as ‘compare and contrast’ with the Puppy campaigns.
Meanwhile 2020: Aside from an initial dive into the RWA’s meltdown, this section looks at the hell year in terms of the perspectives of the Puppy Protagonists. Dominating it are three major elements of the year, Qanon (particularly with Vox Day), Covid (Sarah Hoyt) and ‘Stop the Steal’ (Larry Correia but also Day and Hoyt).
Section 3 (i.e. the actual plot) is likely to blow-out. Three sections of aftermath may look like a lot but as the main thesis of the project is that the themes and cognitive style of the “crazy” behaviour of the US right in 2020 were already overt and apparent in 2015, just at a different scale and context. Note, the thesis isn’t that the Puppies caused later events (they are all minor bit players in bigger story, if that) but rather that the same underlying cultures and attitudes on the right that erupted as the Puppies in fandom, later erupted at a bigger scale (and at greater human cost) in US politics. Sections won’t be of equal length.
As always, suggestions, comments etc are welcome but it will also end up being whatever gets written at the time!
Intro: Jan 6 2021
Part 1: Beginnings 1880 to 2010 A short history of the Hugo Awards 1953 to 2000 Dramatis Personae 1: John Scalzi Dramatis Personae 2: Theodore Beale Tor, Baen and Amazon 1990 -2011 Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America 1965 to 2010 March 1, 2005: Electrolyte Dramatis Personae 3: Larry Correia 2007: Monster Hunter International Meanwhile: Barack Obama Meanwhile: Racefail 2009 2010 Hugos and the SFWA
Part 2: 2011 to 2014 2011: Larry Goes to Worldcon 2012-13: The Day-Scalzi Feud Meanwhile: Mitt Romney 2013 “How to get Correia nominated for a Hugo” 2013: Redshirts Dramatis Personae 4: N.K.Jemisin 2013: Trouble at the SFWA Dramatis Personae 5: Sarah Hoyt and the Mad Geniuses Opera Vita Aeterna 2014: Sad Puppies 2 2014: Ancillary Justice 2014: Vox Gets the Boot Dramatis Personae 6: John C wright and the Evil League of Evil Dramatis Personae 7: George R R Martin 2014: The Hugos go to London Meanwhile: Requires Hate Meanwhile: GamerGate Dramatis Personae 8: Brad Torgersen
Part 3: 2015 January: Announcing SAD PUPPIES 3! February: Rabid Puppies 2015 March: Warnings April Part 1: TSHTF April Part 2: Hugos Hit the News Dramatis Personae 9: Mike Glyer and File 770 May: Planning Ahead E Pluribus Hugo June Part 1: The Tor Boycott Totaled June Part 2: The Human Toll July: Crescendo August: Sasquan September-December: Taking Stock Meanwhile: Donald Trump
Part 4: Fall of the Puppies 2016-2017 The Broken Earth Trilogy Quarter 1 2016 Part 1: Sad Puppies 4 Quarter 1 2016 Part 2: Rabid Puppies Meanwhile: The Rise of the Alt Right Dramatis Personae 10: Jon Del Arroz Enter the Dragon Quarter 2: Reactions Meanwhile: GOP goes Trump August: Midamericon September: Dragon Awards 2016 Meanwhile: Me Too Meanwhile: President Donald Trump The Sad Demise of SP5 Rabid Puppies 2017 Worldcon 75 – Finland
Part 5: The Trump Years 2018-2019 Overview Comicsgate Meanwhile: Qanon Changing fortunes at the Dragon Awards Meanwhile: Black Lives Matter Gender at the Hugo Awards Meanwhile: 20booksto50 and the Nebulas Dramatis Personae: Mixed Fortunes The Hugos and the Campbell Legacy
Part 6: Meanwhile 2020 Trouble in Romance Covid 19 Black Lives Matter US Presidential Election “Stop the Steal”
Usually my Dragon Award coverage is about how nobody knows what is going on because the website is broken and/or contradictory. Currently that’s not the case. Nominations opened on time last November and that’s what the site says and the links work. Well, most of the links work. To nominate you have to agree to the rules but the link to the rules just takes you back to main page. You can read the 2020 rules here https://web.archive.org/web/20200414172023/http://application.dragoncon.net/dragon_awards_terms_conditions.php
We also have our first Dragon Award list of the year, from who else but Declan Finn! Unfortunately Declan is somewhat disenchanted with the whole business of asking people to discuss the Dragons:
“But I am no longer going to ask for more suggestions. I’m not even going to try for a discussion this year. Why? Because every time I’ve done this, no one WANTS a discussion. Almost everyone who comes by drops a link in the comments going ME ME ME, and disappears.”
I can see how that might be annoying. Imagine people using award discussions just as a means to self-promote! What kind of person would do that? It must be terrible for Declan to have to endure that.
There is a common impression that there has been a change in character of the Dragon Awards this year. I though I might use the Wikipedia page view metric (see here) to see if I could quantify it it in a different way.
An immediate obstacle with using the page view figure is that the distribution is very Zipf like. That makes averages very misleading because the odd Steven King or Margaret Atwood creates a big change in the mean score. To overcome that issue and also to show the authors who don’t have Wikipedia pages, I’ve grouped the data in bins that get proportionately bigger. The first bin is 0 to 10 (basically people who don’t have a Wikipedia page) then 10 to 50, then 50 to 100, then 100 to 500 etc. up to 100,000 or more which is basically Steven King.
One major caveat. The page view numbers are as they are in September 2020 in all cases. So figures for past years reflect those counts for the authors now and not as they were in the year of the award.
This is the table for book categories (I haven’t gather the data for people in the comic book categories).
Group
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Total
< 10
42
62
45
34
44
227
≥ 10
1
1
1
3
≥ 50
2
2
1
5
≥ 100
5
4
8
8
6
31
≥ 500
2
1
3
6
≥ 1,000
12
10
9
14
15
60
≥ 5,000
3
1
4
4
2
14
≥ 10,000
6
9
4
3
5
27
≥ 50,000
2
1
1
4
> 100,000
1
1
Winners and Finalists (book categories)
Obviously, there are many ways you can group this data but I think it shows some sensible groupings.
Group
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Total
< 10
1
1
1
2
3
8
≥ 50
1
1
≥ 100
1
1
2
≥ 500
2
2
≥ 1,000
3
3
2
2
2
12
≥ 5,000
1
3
1
1
6
≥ 10,000
4
2
1
7
≥ 50,000
1
1
2
> 100,000
1
1
Winners (book categories)
These tables don’t suggest any substantial changes to the Dragon Awards. There are ups and downs but the overall character seems to be similar: a mix of big names (e.g. in 2016, Terry Pratchett and Brandon Sanderson) down to names that are famous within their Amazon niches (e.g. Nick Cole).
However, if we look at just the ‘headline’ categories defined by the broad genres Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror (I thought I should include Horror) we see a different story.
Group
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Total
< 10
7
12
12
2
33
≥ 10
1
1
2
≥ 50
1
2
1
4
≥ 100
2
2
3
1
8
≥ 500
2
2
≥ 1000
5
6
2
6
10
29
≥ 5000
1
1
3
2
7
≥ 10000
2
3
3
2
5
15
≥ 50000
1
1
2
> 100000
1
1
Winners and Finalists in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror
In these three categories, the authors are (by the page view metric) more notable in 2020 than in previous years.
What about gender? The Dragon Awards have been very male dominated both in absolute terms and even more so in comparison to contemporary awards. Using the page metric groups, a shift becomes more clear.
Group
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Total
< 10
3
5
4
3
2
17
≥ 10
0
≥ 50
1
1
≥ 100
2
1
3
3
2
11
≥ 500
2
2
≥ 1,000
2
3
3
6
10
24
≥ 5,000
2
1
2
2
7
≥ 10,000
3
2
1
1
7
≥ 5,0000
1
1
> 100,000
0
Authors using she/her pronouns book categories
The substantial increase is with women authors in the 1000 to 5000 range. The difference in gender balance becomes clearer in aggregate across the years.
Group
He/him
She/Her
Total
% he
% she
< 10
77
17
94
82%
18%
≥ 10
3
3
100%
0%
≥ 50
4
1
5
80%
20%
≥1 00
20
11
31
65%
35%
≥ 500
4
2
6
67%
33%
≥ 1,000
36
24
60
60%
40%
≥ 5,000
7
7
14
50%
50%
≥ 10,000
20
7
27
74%
26%
≥ 50,000
3
1
4
75%
25%
> 100,000
1
1
100%
0%
Total
175
70
245
71%
29%
Gender split 2016-2020 book categories
The gender balance increases with grouping size until the 5,000 group and then declines. Interestingly, with three each, the 50-50 split in that group also exists for winners.
So, yes the Dragons are changing but only in places. Down ballot, finalists still tend to be less notable and more male in a way that’s not very different from 2016.
A perennial question around award nominees is just how significant are the authors being honoured. It’s a tricky question, particularly as there is no good data about book sales. Amazon ranks are mysterious and Goodreads data may be a reflection of particular community.
I’m currently taking a few baby steps into web scraping data and I was playing with Wikipedia. Every Wikipedia article has a corresponding information page with some basic metadata about the article. For example here is the info page for the article on the writer Zen Cho https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zen_Cho&action=info On that page is a field called “Page views in the past 30 days” that gives the figure stated. As a first attempt at automating some data collection, it’s a relatively easy piece of data to get.
So, I put together a list of authors from my Hugo Award and Dragon Award lists, going back a few years (I think to 2013). Not all of them have Wikipedia pages, partly because they are early in their careers but also because Wikipedia does a poor job of representing authors who aren’t traditionally published. Putting the ‘not Wiki notable’ authors aside, that left me with 163 names. With a flash of an algorithm I had a spreadsheet of authors ranked by the current popularity of their Wikipedia page.
Obviously this is very changeable data. A new story, a tragedy, a scandal or a recent success might change the number of page views significantly from month to month. However, I think it’s fairly useful data nonetheless.
So what does the top 10 look like?
1
Stephen King
216,776
2
Margaret Atwood
75,427
3
Brandon Sanderson
72,265
4
Terry Pratchett
55,591
5
Rick Riordan
43,484
6
N. K. Jemisin
34,756
7
Cixin Liu
32,372
8
Sarah J. Maas
21,852
9
Ian McEwan
20,468
10
Neal Stephenson
20,058
The rest of the top 30 look like this:
11
Robert Jordan
19,169
12
Ted Chiang
17,635
13
Owen King
16,041
14
Jim Butcher
15,493
15
James S. A. Corey
15,109
16
Stephen Chbosky
14,490
17
Leigh Bardugo
13,787
18
China Miéville
13,580
19
Andy Weir
13,057
20
Harry Turtledove
11,452
21
Cory Doctorow
11,362
22
Jeff VanderMeer
11,243
23
John Scalzi
10,796
24
Chuck Tingle
10,763
25
Ben Aaronovitch
10,493
26
Brent Weeks
10,271
27
Ken Liu
9,003
28
Tamsyn Muir
9,002
29
Alastair Reynolds
8,951
30
Kim Stanley Robinson
8,879
There’s a big Zipf-like distribution going on with those numbers that decline quickly by rank. John Scalzi has Chuck Tingle levels of fame on this metric.
OK, so I know people want to know where some of our favourite antagonists are, so here are some of the notable names from the Debarkle years.
40
Vox Day
5,271
45
Larry Correia
4,455
60
John Ringo
2,878
81
John C. Wright
1,251
111
Brad R. Torgersen
560
123
Sarah A. Hoyt
407
140
L. Jagi Lamplighter
229
152
Dave Freer
102
153
Lou Antonelli
101
156
Brian Niemeier
81
Day probably gets a lot more views due to people looking him up because of his obnoxious politics. Larry Correia is in a respectable spot in the 40’s. He is just below Martha Wells who has 4,576 page views — which is essentially the same number given how these figures might change from day to day. John Ringo is just above Chuck Wendig and Rebecca Roanhorse (2,806 and 2,786). John C Wright is sandwiched between Tade Thompson and Sarah Gailey.
I’ve done a very rough division of publishers into big, medium and small. Big is easy to define: the parent company is some sort of huge corporate entity doing hug corporate entity things. Medium? Well don’t ask me for a good definition but the sort-of-company-that-gets-bought-out by a huge corporate entity. Basically, I lumped in all sorts of publishers that had many significant properties and what looks like a corporate structure etc. “Small” is an even worse crime against taxonomy and is basically everybody else from Castalia House to LMBPN to self-published works.
Here’s how the awards split by publisher size, winner/finalist and gender (as marked by pronouns) for all printed categories (books and comics).
Size
Status
he/him
she/her
big
Finalist
65.65%
33.59%
Winner
71.43%
28.57%
big Total
66.27%
33.14%
medium
Finalist
84.52%
14.29%
Winner
95.45%
4.55%
medium Total
86.79%
12.26%
small
Finalist
83.16%
16.84%
Winner
75.00%
25.00%
small Total
82.52%
17.48%
Grand Total
76.46%
23.02%
On pronouns, I don’t think there is a finalist who uses pronouns other than he/him or she/her but I may be wrong. The totals don’t add up to 100% because there are a few finalist only listed as “various” which I didn’t include.
Generally, gender representation is more equitable with the bigger publishers and worse with the medium sized publishers.
The change in character of the award is mapped out in this table.
Year
big
medium
small
2016
50.67%
24.00%
25.33%
2017
23.33%
38.89%
37.78%
2018
42.47%
27.40%
30.14%
2019
49.25%
22.39%
28.36%
2020
63.01%
24.66%
12.33%
Grand Total
44.71%
28.04%
27.25%
all finalists
Aside from 2017, the percentages for “medium” have been fairly stable. The growth in works from the big publishers has been at the expense of the small publishers/self-published works.
Here is how those percentages shift when just looking at the winners.
“More than 8,000 fans cast ballots for Dragon Award winners, selected from among 93 properties in 15 categories covering the full range of fiction, comics, television, movies, video gaming, and tabletop gaming.”
Some decent winners this year but the gender balance is still way off. This table shows the number of authors who weren’t men in all the story categories (novels and comics).
Year
Finalist
Winner
Withdrawn
Grand Total
Percent
2016
12
3
0
15
21.13%
2017
17
0
2
19
21.59%
2018
13
3
16
21.62%
2019
20
3
23
33.82%
2020
19
3
22
30.56%
Grand Total
81
12
2
95
25.47%
The major change is in the two headline categories of Best SF and Best Fantasy were Erin Morgenstern is the first woman to win a Dragon Award in these categories.
Well, I can say what I like about the Dragon Awards but their livestream award announcement beat the Hugo Award in terms of efficiency and general presentation.
The winners (I missed the games) are:
Best Science Fiction Novel: The Last Emperox by John Scalzi
Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal): The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel: Finch Merlin and the Fount of Youth by Bella Forrest
Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel: Savage Wars by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole
Best Alternate History Novel: Witchy Kingdom by D. J. Butler
Best Media Tie-In Novel: Firefly – The Ghost Machine by James Lovegrove
Best Horror Novel: The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
Best Comic Book: Avengers by Jason Aaron, Ed McGuinness
Best Graphic Novel: Battlestar Galactica Counterstrike by John Jackson Miller, Daniel HDR
Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series: The Mandalorian – Disney+
Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker by J. J. Abrams
Also Siobhan Carroll won the Eugie Award for He Can Creep which was a personal favourite.
