Okay, How About THESE Puppies?

[dr_pretentious]

"The Sad What?"

For benefit of readers who don't follow science fiction and fantasy news, the Sad Puppies are the perplexing self-declared villains of the day. This is the kind of story that moves people who don't write fiction to say things like, "You couldn't make this stuff up." Actually, I could, and stuff even weirder, but I will concede, the parts that nobody had to make up are remarkable enough.

Here's a short version: Two smallish factions of politically and socially conservative readers calling themselves the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies gamed the nomination process for the most prestigious awards in SF/F because -- I am not making this up, and some of their other reasons are even further out there -- they were angry at seeing too many awards go to works by women and people of color.

There are other descriptions of the controversy, but suffice it to say, it's an acrimonious mess. One of the most reasoned, open-minded discussions has been hosted by John O'Neill, who's in the awkward position of seeing his magazine Black Gate nominated for a Hugo Award for the first time, through a process he regards as so tainted that he would vote for No Award against the site that's been his labor of love for over a decade. That's where I first found out about the Sad Puppies controversy, because I've been a columnist at Black Gate for ages. The comment threads there have been surprisingly civil for their participants' range of political views. If this is an issue you're curious about, or already care about, here are three posts well worth reading, with links leading to lots of other places where other parts of the wider conversation are going on.

But let's back up for a moment to the names. What's up with the puppies, anyway? Why puppies?

Apparently the first year one of these conservative guys tried to game the nomination process with a slate of candidates, "The original idea was to call it the 'Sad Puppies Think of the Children Campaign' – a dig at those who take their social crusades too seriously." (Yes, that's a link to Breitbart. The awards controversy has been covered by Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post, and the Guardian, too. The world beyond geekdom seems suddenly to care about an award decided by a total of under 6,000 voting members of the World Science Fiction Convention. Weird.) I haven't yet managed to dig up the original post in which the Puppies named themselves, but I'm curious about whether they were experiencing a moment of self-awareness about their own crusade, or mocking that tendency in the people they regarded as their enemies.

Regardless of whether they have a sense of humor about themselves, I've been blessed with a sense of humor about myself, and I've decided on my course of action.

I'll adopt a dog about it.

Well, not about it, of course. I'd been telling the kids we would do that soon, soon, but now I'll commit to having the house ready by Labor Day Weekend. The Capital-S Capital-P Sad Puppies will go win or lose in the Hugo voting that weekend, and there will be drama that lots of other people feel like yelling about online. Meanwhile, my life will go happily on, and I'll spend the day playing fetch with someone far more important to me than any of the folks with a nomination in the Best Short Story category.

Who has been harmed by this year's Hugo Awards conflict? Well, some writers, editors, and artists who had worthy work eligible for nomination this year got locked out of contention, and that hurts their long-term career chances. People like John O'Neill and Matthew David Surridge, who did not ask to be nominated on the slate and did not see any of this coming, have had to do a lot of explaining about their principles and positions in a controversy they did nothing to stir up. The long-term integrity of the Hugo Awards has been compromised, and that's something a lot of people care about for a wide variety of different reasons. I'm not in a position to help any of those people.

But what about the literal, actual puppies?

Because now every time I hear the words "sad puppies," I'm not going to have warm, fuzzy thoughts about rescued dogs who need homes, like maybe mine. I'm going to think about Theo Beale, a.k.a. Vox Day, the most hated man in science fiction, who has argued in earnest that African-Americans are subhuman and that women should not be allowed to vote.

Seriously, when I read some of the things the people writing out of the Rabid Puppies faction say when they try to explain their reasoning, my first thought is, This is an insult to actual rabid puppies everywhere.

These guys have every right to call themselves Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, Super Puppies, Blue Ribbon Puppies, or whatever they like. Fine.

Meanwhile, I commend to your attention Petfinder.com, in case there's room in your life for an actual sad puppy, one who would rather take a walk with you and then spend half an hour gnawing on his squeaky toy than, say, hijack your community's efforts to recognize excellence and then spend eternity bashing an imaginary conspiracy of so-called Social Justice Warriors.

You could name your puppy Hugo, or perhaps Norton or Campbell in recognition of the other luminaries whose names have been given to the major awards in our field. You could name your puppy after a worthy work or author whose work got closed out by the nomination shenanigans -- or by the last few years of alleged "affirmative action awards," if you believe that's what happened. Hey, one area of common ground I'm willing to credit the Sad Puppies with is that affection for real flesh-and-blood dogs is probably equally distributed across the political spectrum.

Fortunately, dogs don't care whom you vote for on your Hugo ballot, or whether your name appears on said ballot. As Aldous Huxley said, "To his dog, every man is Napoleon, hence the constant popularity of dogs." My hypothetical dog will care far less than I do about the number of rejections my trunk manuscript has racked up.

So maybe sad puppies are the ultimate solution to the problem of Sad Puppies. As John Scalzi put it in his list of possible responses to the Hugo voter's predicament, "I also think it’s okay to penalize graceless award grasping by people who clearly despise the Hugo and what they believe it represents, and yet so very desperately crave the legitimacy they believe the award will confer to them. Therapy is the answer there, not a literary award."

Not up for therapy? Petfinder.com is still right here.

Comments

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Ouch.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

YAY for a new puppy!!!!

(I miss my dog, and I doubt we will ever get another. We got a dog, in method geared towards avoiding serious dog behavior issues and ended up with our lives incredibly curtailed by a dog that had serious issues. We both are terrified that the universe will give us another one. So I will vicariously squee at your upcoming puppy.)

[jaime-sama.livejournal.com]

Ack. I did notice that Black Gate got nominated, and was sort of happy for them and sort of cringing for them (this year of all years??)

Hugo makes a great dog name. :)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm very sorry if I caused you grief over the Sad Puppy business. I'm feeling pretty low now that Black Gate pulled out of the nominations. I feel that my association with the Puppies has angered my friends over at Black Gate and robbed them of a victory because of Vox Day. My comments were genuine in that I think your work over there is very good and all of you earned a Hugo in my view. There isn't a fanzine that can compare.

You asked me what I think of Vox Day, well, I'll tell you. He isn't an ally of the Sad Puppies, he is their enemy. There are a lot of Sad Puppies who are coming to that conclusion. He ruined whatever good could have come from what I think Brad Torgerson and Larry Correia were trying to do. Both were trying to build the Hugo and bring more people into it. They were simply offering a vote to support what they felt were good stories. Sure, they could have done better but there really isn't a manual on how to do it. There are many who are very angry at being shut out and a lot of the anger that people feel are what the Sad Puppies have felt for a while. How does one stop it though? There isn't a leader that can deliver that vision at the moment. For the moment it looks like Vox Day speaks for all conservatives and all of the right. I doubted his conservative credentials the moment I read through some of his blog. He is an elitist snob. The things he said about African Americans are the kind of things that liberals and moderates have long thought were what all conservatives think. That is simply not true and it is hard to fight that stereotype when you have a bigoted lunatic championing the Puppy cause and acting like a horses ass. I know he takes glee in his viciousness and the pain he delivers. I also don't like his views on women. They disgust me. He is a vile wretched worm as far as I am concerned but I know ignoring him is the worst thing that one can do so I tried to be very dismissive of his influence. If you felt that it was silent approval, I regret that.

I can't tell if you think it is contradictory to praise Larry Correia and condemn Vox Day but to me there is no shade of grey between them. I spent 23 years in the military and I was away from home for at least 11 of those years. I never saw my children's first foot steps or heard their first words. My wife of 30 years lived most of them in poverty and on her own while I was deployed to some hellhole or another. During my time in the service I was spit on twice, stabbed once, and this was done by people who hated my uniform and my own people. I've seen war and I've seen good men die. The pay off was that I believed in my country and the freedoms that we have. I wasn't allowed political speech or to take part in any of that. When jackasses like Vox Day abuse their free speech and use it to club people who he deems inferiors it shakes me to my core. Yes, I get a lot of abuse from liberals too but I expect that. Correia reminds me of the lions I served with, men (and women) who were courageous and brave. Yes they may have rough exteriors but when the heat is on they don't go hide in a bunker. Vox is a punk. He talks like a privileged brat. I have no respect for him. He would not be able to deal with a woman like my wife who is a true pioneer woman that can take the arrows. He feels threatened by feminists even though he puts on a brave bark. No one should fear this man. He has no leadership skills because he does not know when to follow or when to shut the hell up. If he were in the military he'd be the type that gets fragged by his own men.

I went to Making Light and I did not see much in the way of comments that were beyond the pale. Sure, sniping here and there but nothing more than I see on every other forum when groups are tribing up. I won't go as far as to say hyper sensitive because there seems to be a lot of that going around.
I'm still tickled that you would consider reading one of my suggested books. I plan to give Pretty Deadly a try because I like weird westerns and you did sell it well. I don't think Railroad! will be the best book you've ever read but I do find the concept of a webserial interesting. I'm thinking of doing one of my own some day.

Respectfully,

Ape

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

My dear Ape, from my very local point of view, you are the best thing to come out of this whole mess. I'm so glad to be getting to know you now. Before this controversy, you were one of a handful of regular readers and commenters who tended toward conservatism in your views, but for my first few years at BG I didn't always remember which of you guys was which (until I learned to keep track of the guy who often replies to Elizabeth Cady's posts by saying, "Death, death, DEATH to political correctness!" -- you know the one -- I figured it was important to remember that not all of our resident conservatives were issuing knee-jerk death threats). Bit by bit, I noticed your sense of humor, and your tendency to go Full Curmudgeon about the issues that really bugged you.

This year's Sad Puppies controversy changed my perception of you twice in rapid succession. Early on in that first comment thread after the ballot was announced, you brandished your rhetorical flame thrower pretty high, and I thought, with regret, that I might have to lump you in the category with Theo Beale. But as the conversation went on, you were more interested in the issues than the talking points. And when you were interested enough to tell Smitty that you'd misunderstood something he's said, that you'd been wrong, and that you wanted to hear more of his thinking, you inspired me.

I figured, if you had the courage to bring your humility into the conversation, I could try it, too. We still disagree about some key parts of what's going on out there, but at least now I feel like I understand the perspectives I'm disagreeing with better.

When I wrote the post above, I didn't yet know how big the differences are between Larry Correia's positions and Theo Beale's. The only stuff I've read by Correia has been his posts about SP this year. Before the smaller SP nomination controversy last year, I'd never really been aware of his name at all. My perception until just over a week ago was that this whole business was Beale's doing, and it didn't make sense to me that so many people would adopt his agenda as their own. What a relief it is to know that the reason it didn't make sense was that something else was happening the whole time.

My impression of Correia and the people who side with him, rather than with Beale, is that eventually, even if it takes years, things will work out and the community will be better for having talked openly about its disagreements. If you haven't read Elizabeth Bear's post about fandom as a self-sustaining multi-generational anarchy, do read it, because it's as evenhanded and hopeful as anything John O'Neill has said, while covering different ground. She's also made a couple of more recent posts about the Hugos in a similar mode that are worth reading, but the first one is the one referenced most often in other places. The short version: the SF/F community has been around a long time, and has worked through other messes as contentious as this one before. It takes work, and sometimes it's not pretty, but we do it.

And I think we will. I think you and I are part of that process.

(My comment's too long for Livejournal to process, so watch for the sequel.) (http://matociquala.livejournal.com/2257327.html)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

(Part 2 of a comment too long for Livejournal to process at once)

I have hesitated to talk about the gap I see opening between the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies, because there are still a lot of people who feel under attack (well, because some people have actually been attacking each other, so I can't dismiss that feeling), and I worry about being interpreted in a way I don't mean.

I'm so glad to see fans and pros who got into this whole mess because they favored a style of storytelling they felt was being marginalized, or because they felt the awards system was unfair, peeling themselves away from the much smaller faction that actually is making arguments that women and people of color shouldn't be writing and that stories from their viewpoints shouldn't be told. I can't justify the personal attacks that Correia and Torgerson have had to deal with, and I won't try to, but I hope you can understand that people like me have been honestly confused by Theo Beale's claims to leadership.

It seems we agree that Beale has publicly argued for racist and sexist beliefs. When it looked like most of the Sad Puppies movement was in it for the same reasons he was, I thought the SP supporters who bristled at being seen as racist and sexist were maybe disingenuous, or maybe fooling themselves. Why else were they there, after all?

Here's why I worry about being taken the wrong way: I worry that if I emphasize the differences between the two camps, I'll be accused of playing divide-and-conquer, of arguing that the left-leaning factions in SF/F should try to co-opt Correia and his supporters. That's not what I mean, for two reasons. One is that the dialogue between Correia and George R.R. Martin has taught me a lot of things I didn't know about the history of the Hugos, and indeed, the awards process is more problematic than I realized. (GRRM will probably never know I thanked him, but the universe will, so: Thank you, GRRM.) The second reason is that you guys are way too ornery and skeptical to co-opt. And yes, that's a compliment.

I've never met Theo Beale, but the impression I get from reading his own words and contrasting them with Correia's is that he is using your faction, and it looks to my outsider's eye like that use is pretty cynical. If you and your companions were to turn your skeptical eyes and powers of orneriness on Beale, who apparently wants to destroy whatever he can't control, that would go a long way to convincing the rest of fandom, and the people outside fandom who've started watching, that you guys really aren't the racists and sexists Beale's claims of leadership implied, and that you really want the fairness you've always said you were about.

You're concerned that Beale may have ruined the good you were trying to accomplish. I don't think it has to turn out that way. This year's Hugos will still be a contentious mess. But the Hugo is about more than this year. And even if the tradition represented by the Hugo Award doesn't survive, the community is about much more than its awards. I'm glad to be part of this community with you.

[(Anonymous)]

I had a post but then I tried to switch my name and it was lost. A lot has happened since that one post by Sandifer. He took it to Vox Day with a vengeance. He also blasted the Sad Puppies. I think what he said about the Sad Puppies was unfair but, I think a lot of people will rally to him because he blasted Vox Day so well.

The trouble I'm seeing is that there is a lot more tribal saber rattling and not much communication. I'm glad that you are open minded enough to listen and weigh responses.

I wrote a humorous Green Eggs and Ham parody. I won't have anywhere to post it though.

I think most haven't the energy to keep trading shots at each other. I'm very interested to see what will happen next year more than what will happen this year. I think this one will be a squabble.

[(Anonymous)]

I've tried to make two posts here as Wild Ape but something got crossed. I'll just say that the Sad Puppies will have to weather the storm. This is just exhausting stuff to try and fix. I am just stubborn and I will continue to vote for the Hugos and nominate for the Hugos until the Hugos either changes the rules to make it a non fan award or they just give up and let the votes fall where they may. Showing up to vote is the key. I don't think the Sad Puppies have had a fair shake but there is little one can do about that. I don't plan to get ratted or silenced. I'll point out the fear mongering and perhaps speak out against those working Vox Day tactics within the Sad Puppy ranks. My friends are united. One, despite my recommendations against it said that he would no longer buy Tor or Castelia books. He added names to who he is boycotting. That is about the only one in our ranks who has made up his mind about the whole mess.

You mentioned that you wanted to be at the beginning of a series. I'm half way through Poison Fairies: The Landfill War and it is pretty good. Only the first book out in the trilogy so far. It is by Luca Tarenzi. A great series ended with Brody's Ghost and the final came out three days ago. It is by Mark Cilley and it is one of the best graphic novels I've read. It will be my pick for this year's Hugo. It is a Manga and was recommended by my son who reads the stuff. I don't think Black Gate has looked at it.