The rumblings and attempts to delegitimize Sad Puppies are gearing up over a medium more suited to cute photos. People who haven’t followed the campaigns and who have been told by those they trust that the Sad Puppies supporters are evil jealous old white men who can’t get an award on merit and have to pack the ballot and so on and so forth etcetera ad nauseam are screeching at least as loud as the ones who actually believe that tripe (one has to wonder what the ones who’ve read the Sad Puppy posts and still scream it were thinking. Or, more to the point, if they were thinking).
Leaving out the little issue of how hilariously wrong this is – something I could spend multiple posts on, without repeating myself or even descending into vulgarity (that would be even more posts), I offer six words in refutation.
Terry Pratchett never won a Hugo.
The man was only the greatest writer in the last thirty years or so. He was only consistently head and shoulders above every other author in the field – and I include out of genre authors in that assessment – for almost his entire writing career. Only capable of stopping traffic when he held a signing because so many people showed up. Not Hugo-worthy at all.
But then, he didn’t fit the criteria endorsed by the self-appointed luminaries of the field. Instead of beating his readers over the head with “sexism bad!” he wrote about the legendary dwarf lovers (they were both dwarfs), the dwarfish sexual revolution in Ankh-Morpork with its specialized chain-mail lines and beard styling products and high heels, and he wrote about the tension it caused and is still causing with the deep dwarfs – and every damn character, even the “bad” ones, was someone you could sympathize with.
Instead of a sermon on race and culture, he gave us Carrot, the dwarf-by-adoption who is six foot plus and when he flexes his muscles other muscles have to get out of the way but who is in all ways that matter a dwarf. And the rest of the Ankh-Morpork Watch, as diverse a collection as the city itself.
More sinful yet, Terry Pratchett taught history warts and all through his asides, his running gags, and his footnotes. Koom Valley could have been any of dozens of European wars. The Quisition of Om (and the mugs in the break room that have logos like “World’s Best Dad”) is a lesson that decent people can and will do horrible things if they believe they’re doing it for the right reasons. There are eerie echoes of the last fifteen years or so in the later books, masked by the humor and the way the characters are always people first, people who have good reasons for the things they’re doing, reasons that make sense to them and sometimes even to readers.
But he was not part of “worldcon, and the people who attend/support it”, so he wasn’t worthy of an award for “the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements”.
And this is why Sad Puppies exists.
Not to give egoboo to the people who run it. Not to “break” or “ruin” the Hugo Awards. Not to give the finger to the SF & F establishment. None of that.
Sad Puppies exists because brilliant authors have been consistently ignored by an award that claims to celebrate the “best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements”, and it’s time – past time – that the Hugo stopped belonging to “worldcon, and the people who attend/support it” and went back to belonging to “everyone who reads SF”.
Mad Genius Club 
97 responses to “ Terry Pratchett and the Sadness of Puppies”
would love to see their string of excuses for that…
Apparently it’s a conspiracy, I’m not in possession of the facts, and the usual string of mouthing off. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s an indictment of the groupthink and incestuous closeness that’s led to such a ridiculous situation.
Well said, Kate. I linked to your article at my blog:
http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2015/04/of-hugo-awards-liberals-and-sad-puppies.html
Thank you!
Sir Pterry never … *I look with astonishment at Kate’s post* … only one of the sharpest, funniest and most acutely observant fantasy authors in the last thirty years? Never a Hugo?
Damn. Just damn.
Yeah. The fact that he’s not the only magnificent author in the last 20-30 years who’s been overlooked is equally tragic.
I hope, however, that he doesn’t get one for The Shepherd’s Crown or really, because he died. While he had the best of all possible reasons for declining quality of work, I’m afraid it did decline.
Amen to that, alas.
I wonder if it would be possible to have a trial (say at LibertyCon or DragonCon) of WorldCon for offenses against humanity. The panel could be the witnesses, the moderator the judge; offer a WorldCon rep the opportunity to act as defense attorney, and Larry Correia, Brad, and Kate are the prosecutorial Dream Team. The audience is the jury.
Do it! And if you do it at LibertyCon, that may be the final straw to convince me to go to a con. Never been. But I’m still a fan!
Meh. The WorldCon bunch is apt to consider LibertyCon a biased venue. DragonCon would be fun, because it’s arguably a rival to WorldCon and it’s hard to make a bias claim on causes near and dear to SJW hearts. Most likely they wouldn’t sent a representative, but trying them in absentee would be fun, too.
Oh my. That could be fun… “I would offer If you were a dinosaur as evidence, but it’s in violation of multiple international treaties to force anyone to read it.”
Like Vogon poetry.
But worse. Vogon poetry was only the third worst in the universe, after all.
Was it ever established which was worse – Narn Opera or Klingon Opera?
Well, a Klingon opera brought down the government.
Moreover, Terry Pratchett fairly frequently attended conventions in the UK and overseas until his health became a problem. His reputation as a guest was good and professional. As a panelist and just as somebody walking the halls in his distinctive hats and suits, his reputation was of someone both thoughtful and generous in encounters with fandom and folks he didn’t know. He was a good sport and did all sorts of weird funny stuff that he was asked to do as convention events. (Public computer game matches on the big screen, for example.) Plus, his name on a convention flyer was a license to coin money.
I don’t even think the SJWs even had anything actively or passively against him. But I think his US fandom didn’t campaign for him in the Hugos, and there was never a year where one of his popular books was overwhelmingly popular among the Hugo voters in the year of US publication. Also, Pratchett never made a big thing about not having one, a la Susan Lucci. Finally, there is a fairly large chunk of Hugo voters (though decreasing every year) who refuse to vote for any fantasy, since they take the position that it was instituted as a science fiction award, and not a “speculative fiction including fantasy award.” So it didn’t happen, even after publication started to synchronize more closely across the world.
I took a look, and I don’t see that any of his books, or any of the adaptations of his books, were ever nominated for a Hugo.
What is more difficult to understand is this:
NO TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL WAS EVER NOMINATED FOR THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD. And frankly, a lot of crap over the last twenty years has been nominated and/or won.
But again, Pterry never complained, and most of his fans weren’t World Fantasy voters who campaigned for his works’ nomination, so he never won.
Y’know, just food for thought here.
I think that not being aware of how things like the Hugos and such are nominated and voted for is part of the problem. I honestly wasn’t even aware fans could nominate and vote for the Hugos just by purchasing the Supporting Membership at the right time. Yes, I’m aware of the grinding of teeth at this information being made more ‘generally known’ because omg now the ‘general’ fandom can nominate or vote.
I’m grateful for the Sad Puppies campaign for that reason alone.
I wonder if PTerry’s works can be nominated for a RetroHugo at least.
I’d like to see him honored with a Hugo equivalent of the Grandmaster. Because he was.
I wonder about such a thing, and I think that kind of award would be damnedly difficult to choose!
He probably would have gotten a Gandalf, if that project had not imploded.
CORRECTION: Terry Pratchett did receive the World Fantasy Award in 1991. For Good Omens, which was pretty much a case of the Neil Gaiman voters, since that was at the beginning of his fame and he never did get a voting bloc.
He always received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, when people thought he was about to die.
But sheesh, that’s ridiculous. His cover artists didn’t win Hugos or World Fantasy Awards, either, even though I know there were many well-received art books and Pratchett tie-ins. (I can understand him not receiving the Nebula, since that’s really a US writer award.)
J.K. Rowling apparently was never nominated for World Fantasy. (She did win the Hugo, because of a campaign similar to the one which won Tolkien his Hugo and largely opened up the Hugos to being a spec fic award that included fantasy.)
There are people who’ve been nominated multiple times for World Fantasy who only peripherally are involved in the field, or whom hardly anybody has ever heard of. Some of them are very nice people whom I respect, but it’s… well, it’s because they go to the con, it was being held in their area, and their friends voted for them, although I doubt these particular people campaigned in any way.
CORRECTION AGAIN! SORRY! Gaiman novels have been nominated World Fantasy four times (including Good Omens), but none of his novels have ever won.
Issue #19 of his comic The Sandman notoriously won Best Short Fiction in 1991, which was the same year that Good Omens was nominated for Best Novel. Gaiman has been nominated 3 times for actual short stories, but has never won again in that category.
HUGO CORRECTION:
Terry Pratchett was nominated for the Hugo for Best Related Work for The Science of Discworld in 2000. It was co-written with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. (This was the same year the Minicon 34 Restaurant Guide was also nominated for a Hugo for Best Related Work. Although I grant you that the Restaurant Guide was epic.)
He would have been nominated for Best Novel for Going Postal in 2005, but withdrew the book from nomination while it was still just shortlisted. None of Pratchett’s picture books have been nominated for Best Short Story.
A non-fiction book about him (Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature) was nominated for Best Related Work in 2001.
NO TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL WAS EVER NOMINATED FOR THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD. And frankly, a lot of crap over the last twenty years has been nominated and/or won.
Phrase it “No Terry Pratchett novel was ever nominated or won the World Fantasy Award, but crap has.” It’s self-explanatory.
He wasn’t part of the in-clique, so he was overlooked. It’s as simple – and as damning – as that.
I don’t think I’ve read any of PTerry’s work outside of his collaboration with Neil Gaiman (because I was never sure where to start out of the huge body of work) but most of my friends love his stuff. I am aware of how much he’s affected the genre of fantasy.
And I am shocked to learn he has never, ever, EVER won a Hugo. Just gobsmacked.
Small wonder that the people complaining about Sad Puppies are happy to see Jim Butcher burn for being nominated to the Sad Puppy slate. The funniest thing about that is they’re the ones claiming we’re anti-fun and anti-joy.
Terry Pratchett never won a Hugo.
Jim Butcher has never been nominated for Best Novel at the World Fantasy Awards, which is ridiculous.
Of course, neither has J.K. Rowling been nominated for World Fantasy. (Rowling did receive 2 back to back Hugo nominations, and won Best Novel Hugo for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2001.)
Maybe one of the things that could be done as well (with the Sad Puppies) is letting fans know what awards they are able to participate in. It is likely to be a lot of work, but folk like myself who are ‘just readers/fans’ weren’t aware of being able to vote in the Hugos.
And yes, Jim Butcher should bloody well be at least nominated for the World Fantasy Awards. I think Larry should too, on that vein.
Complaining about this makes as much sense to me as complaining that movies that people actually — you know — LIKE never win Oscars. I.E., not very much, thank you. Sure it’s witless. Sure it reveals the moral bankruptcy of the establishment. But that’s the nature of establishments. They’re decadent and morally bankrupt. Doesn’t matter if it’s a left- or a right-establishment or an up- or down-establishment, or a left-handed- or a strange-establishment.
M
Well, not everybody can be in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or SFWA, so Oscars and Nebulas are expected to be like that. Hugos and World Fantasy Awards are a tad more democratic, even if they’re really just glorified fundraising mechanisms.
I see it a bit differently. Pointing out the failures of those awards to acknowledge widely popular stories (whatever the medium) takes a bit of the elitist shine off.
In this case, I don’t mean elitist derogatorily, I’m simply referencing the broad assumption of “educated taste.” The wider audience, more casual in their consumption, may be taken in by the notional prestige conferred by more serious connoisseurs gathering to bestow approval on works in the field.
This costs them money, time and enjoyment. Frequently enough, it drives them from the field.
If the awards were reflective of the sort of in-spiraling technical absorption found in certain venues of music (like jazz) or art (cubism), then a sort of distant appreciation for a skill well beyond the average could fall into place and most people would just recognize they’re not that deep into it and move on to works with less technical stress, works more suited to the depth of their interest.
As this is demonstrably not the case, much of the time, casual audiences are left with the feeling that the “best” is crap. If the dross on display is the pinnacle there is no work suited to their casual interest.
This has been whittling audiences across the board. Openly, publicly calling the awards into question — if nothing else, it lets the wider audience know about deeply invested connoisseurs whose opinions stand in contrast to the awards.
In the Hugo fight, dragging the insular and self-segregating nature of some of the “elite” into the light has, at minimum, made public the notion held by some that the Hugos don’t belong to all of fandom. They belong to this small group, are only reflective of this small group, and if nothing changes can be dismissed as representative of only this small group.
the just comparison there would be the Nebula, not the Hugo. If there were a fan award for movies, and it didn’t go to popular ones, there would be just suspicious. (I think I remember seeing someone saying that Sad Puppies are just looking for something to blame that their work isn’t popular. If Larry Correia’s work is not popular, I’d like to see what is.)
because I was never sure where to start out of the huge body of work
“Start anywhere” is probably the appropriate answer to this. He has several groups of main characters that recur in the books, but each book pretty much stands on its own. You don’t miss anything in the plot of a given book by not reading the previous ones, though you only realize how much the characters have changed by starting from the first book to feature them.
“The Color of Magic” I believe the very first book, and centers on the wizzard Rincewind.
“Reaper Man” features Death, but is not the first book to do so.
“Soul Music” features Death’s granddaughter Susan, and is the first book with that character.
The ones I would recommend first are the books featuring the Night Watch, and the books featuring Death and/or Susan.
I’d heard friends speak fondly of the Death character, so I might try that. Still, what was the first book for that world? *curious*
Uhh… “Mort”, I think? I’m not sure that I’ve actually read that one.
… No wait! I have! The high concept is “Death takes an apprentice.”
According to the Discworld wiki, “Reaper Man” is the second book that features Death as a main character. High concept: “Death takes a holiday.”
This should help you organize your reading ^_^:
http://discworld.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Discworld_Books
Thanks very much! ‘Death takes a holiday’ sounds like an entertaining opening. XD It is punting it up to be my first read from the body of work.
Ah! My apologies – it appears that I mis-remembered “Reaper Man’s” concept.
“Reaper Man” is “Death finds a new job.”
“Soul Music” is ” ‘Death takes a holiday’ meets ‘the Buddy Holly story’ ”
“Reaper Man” is still an excellent place to start.
Wyrd Sisters will get you onto the fabulous Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg train. Their novels follow in a sequence. Likewise, Guards, Guards will introduce you to the spectacular Night Watch series, starring Sam Vimes and Corporal Carrot. For me, those two subsets contain Pratchett at his most spectacular.
Sorry. City Watch. As in Ankh Morpork. Night Watch is a title!
I have heard that they’d be the kind of characters I’d enjoy reading. I may start with Mort and Wyrd Sisters.
Shadowdancer,
If you decide to remedy the sad lack of Sir Pterry in your life (a condition for which I almost envy you — his books are all still ahead of you to discover for the first time, what joy!), I’d recommend starting with any of the goldenrod-yellow titles shown on the following chart: http://epliss.com/files/pratchett_e.jpg
That should help you sort out where to start.
Well, the ‘I’ll start reading them when he’s done,” was one of the reasons I kind of held off, because from the way my friends talked, it sounded like the middle of the story. Thanks for the recommendations!
If you don’t like one strand, try another. For instance, I find that Rincewind is usually meh, Granny and Death are usually good yarns, but I enjoy the City Watch books the most. Talk to other fans, and their preferences are about as varied as Pterry’s books. So if one leaves you a little cold, try another one with different characters.
That’s a good idea, thanks! So I should see them as ‘sets’ of books versus an overall series.
I recall him being shortlisted for “GOING POSTAL,” but withdrawing?
You are correct. The Discworld wiki says that Going Postal was nominated for the Nebula and the Hugo, but Pratchett said that he’d decided that the stress over his first Hugo nomination would take away all the fun of attending a UK Worldcon, and refused nomination. Nomination statistics showed later that he had gotten enough nominations to push Iain Banks’ book The Algebraist off the ballot entirely.
This may have caused voters not to vote for him after that, as some may have gotten the impression he didn’t want awards, or it may just have been the UK factor.
He also withdrew his Nebula nomination for Going Postal, though. I don’t understand that one.
Pratchett’s statement: “The reason was that I wanted to enjoy the Worldcon. It’s not been a good 18 months, and I just know that the Japanese meal I had with friends that night did me more good than an evening of suspense!”
The same website where the wiki linked also said:
The only other two known cases of authors withdrawing their novels from the Hugo novel shortlist were Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside and James Tiptree Jr’s Up The Walls Of The World. … Ted Chiang withdrew “Liking What You See: A Documentary” from the Hugo novella shortlist because he felt it was not representative of his best work.
That the talented and reportedly gentlemanly Pratchett’s opting out made room for the talented by detestable Banks is ironic.
As Ms. Hoyt pointed out to me over on FB, that it took until his _33rd_ Discworld novel to even nominate him……..
Exactly. Just because he wasn’t part of the in-crowd is no reason to deny him recognition for his achievements, or to pass him over in favor of nonentities.
Terry Pratchett never won a Nebula Award. He did win the closely related 2010 Andre Norton Award (which is for kids’ fiction) for I Shall Wear Midnight.
He was nominated for the Nebula for Best Novel twice: for Going Postal in 2006, (apparently he tried to withdraw but they left it on the slate) and for Making Money in 2009.
So I’ll summarize the Terry Pratchett award situation:
Hugos: Nominated once for his co-writers’ non-fiction book, The Science of Discworld. Withdrew nomination for Best Novel for Going Postal. (One non-fiction book about his fiction was also nominated.)
Nebulas: Nominated twice for Best Novel. Received non-Nebula (Andre Norton Award) from SFWA for I Shall Wear Midnight.
World Fantasy: Nominated once for Best Novel for Good Omens, co-written with Neil Gaiman, during the same year Neil Gaiman won Best Short Story.
So there were only four years he was even nominated for a major award:
2000 (nonfiction co-written Related Work Hugo nom)
2005 (Going Postal – withdrawn Hugo nom and Nebula)
2009 (Nebula nom)
Oh, and:
1991 (Good Omens, co-written with Neil Gaiman, World Fantasy nom)
I can certainly see how that would be aggravating to Terry Pratchett fans — full disclosure here: I am not one myself, which I’ll concede to be my personal character failing — but I do have to ask: In the years he was nominated, what works in fact won?
Just because Sir Pterry is no doubt amazing doesn’t mean that in one particular year no other specific book was actually better (for the highly subjective values of “better” now revealed as being an ineluctable part of this process) than his specific nominated work.
Of course, if the works which did win in the years he was nominated were, in fact, shall we say, selected for criteria other than pure aesthetic merit, then that is further evidence for the thesis.
I don’t have a problem with the years when Pratchett was nominated. Most of them were solidly competitive years. It’s the fact he was only nominated for any major awards in four of those years, when his career lasted a good forty years (and he was coining money for thirty).
Of course, his knighthood was a pretty good award, so maybe we should turn over Nebula voting to the crowned heads of Europe. 🙂
To be fair, getting published for the first time in 1971 and then fading out of sight for large chunks of the next couple decades. And it’s more like “coining money for twenty.”
Douglas Adams was never nominated either. I understand some of his books are still being read.
Oh, quite. The slang in the Hitchhikers series has dated rather sadly, but the two Dirk Gently books are still comic gems.
When Terry Pratchett receives such scant attention over his career but some are bending over backwards to nominate/award newcomers with little/no depth in their bibliography…
Clean hit, Kate.
You’ve got to do better research before you write an article like this. Seriously. People already pointed out you were wrong on award nominations. But to say that Terry Pratchett “was not part of “worldcon, and the people who attend/support it”, so he wasn’t worthy of an award for “the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements”.” is, frankly, nonsense. Terry was at a number of Worldcons and he was a guest of honor at Noreascon IV (http://www.mcfi.org/noreascon4/guests/index.html#pratchett). Terry was one of the most popular writers in fandom. There have been Discworld panels at Worldcon for 20 years. A lot of us voted for his books for the Hugo Award in the ’00s (I can think of at least 4 that I voted for). So, please, don’t lump Terry in with the people who keep whining about the Hugos – I don’t ever remember hearing him whine about anything.
I did not say he was never nominated. That he wasn’t nominated until Going Postal is itself an indictment of the closed-in nature of the Hugos of late.
Did you actually follow the link? I was quoting mprss trs (aka the disemvoweller aka TNH) and her view of who “worldcon” is – a view that excludes us lowly peons, and yes, Terry Pratchett. There’s a reason I put that phrase in quotes when I used it.
I’m certainly not lumping Sir Terry in with the whining crowd. He was far too much the gentleman for that. He deserved more recognition than he got, and the fact that the in-power cabal that believed until recently that they owned the Hugos clearly did not consider him “worthy” – or he would have received more nominations and at least one Best Novel award.
[…] People keep saying that the Sad Puppies campaign isn’t necessary, because quality and popular … in the Hugo Awards. Truly important writers are always honored in the Nebulas and the World Fantasy Awards. […]
I just reviewed “Company Daughter” by Callan Primer (kali) on my blog and Amazon. It’s great, but have at least a sandwich available, because the cooking bits will make you hungry.
And that bit about randomly doing ambush/ slash and burn reviews, in order to check the impact of reviews on book sales? It was totally an April Fools joke. Big hat tip to Cedar and Laura who demanded the truth (in a very appropriate, non-micro-aggressive way).
I only recently say your review of my book. When I discovered/fixed the spelling error in my name. You caught what I was trying to say, with my characters. Thank you for the “good review.” It is appreciated, even if you hate other books I may write. 🙂
Walter, all I can say is, you write ’em, and I’ll read ’em. Is “100 Reasons” yours?
Just to be clear (because I keep hearing about this from every other blogger I read), what precisely is Sad Puppies? I have a general idea, but I’d like the formal definition.
https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/announcing-sad-puppies-3/
Here is where Sad Puppies 3 started.
Sad Puppies 1 & 2 were a Larry https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/announcing-sad-puppies-3/ project
How did Correia turn into the link again???
That should cover it.
Thank you Wendell. It does explain things beautifully.
I’m not sure that Sad Puppies can have a formal definition. It means different things to different people. Each year so far has had a different goal and a different focus. This year’s focus seems to be on getting recognition for authors who ought to have gotten recognition at some point but never have. To my mind this feels a little bit like voting for the author rather than voting for the work, but when Brad and whoever were picking out the works to recommend it does seem like “*and* wrote an excellent book this year” was an important criteria so I’m probably being nitpicky. (Hey, we’re all supposed to be totally lock-step, right?)
I imagine that next year will be different again. Kate is someone different. What she’s concerned about isn’t what someone else is going to be most concerned about. (Larry was explicit about the fact that what Brad wanted to do wasn’t necessarily something Larry was all that interested in… which is saving the Hugos.)
What I’d personally like to see is a more crowd-sourced nomination process. I don’t think that was possible before because too few people had any idea of how the Hugos work or, particularly, how the process works, and certainly had no idea what was eligible in any given year. I know I didn’t. Now, sure, in theory the crowd-sourcing is supposed to happen without an intervening Evil League of Evil priesthood making suggestions… laity all the way, direct access to Hugo, right? Each individual is supposed to come up with their list of “best this year” without getting “these are eligible from Tor” lists or Sad Puppies lists or nudge-nudge-wink-wink suggestions from favorite authors to their fan bases. But a person’s got to know about it before the year even starts instead of scrambling to remember what they read and when they read it when the deadline is looming.
I’m sure that Kate has her own ideas, but one thing that Sad Puppies 4 has is lead time and another thing that it has is far more people who have now got an idea about how it all works. Instead of merely gushing to a friend “so and so’s new book is her best, it blew me away” people can add “I think it should be nominated for a Hugo. You need to read it and see what you think.”
Ultimately the Hugo shouldn’t be an author popularity contest, (the leading cause of Puppy Sadness), it should be a *story* popularity contest.
My opinion only.
Before he started selling a lot of fiction, Larry Correia was a professional grade accountant. This sort who investigates lots of financial numbers to make sure nobody is stealing anything. He had done it a lot, and so became very good at it.
As a writer, he had become involved in a number of debates over the state of the industry.
Some of these involved the Hugo awards. His background, his blog page views, and his sales lead him to think that he could conduct a public test. Furthermore, any public attention would advertise his works with those dissatisfied with industry production.
The first two years, his fans paid their fee, then sent him proof of registration, and told him what they had voted for. He was able to convince himself that there were no mechanical fixing. He brought in some customers. He also had a bunch of distant acquaintances call his wife to see if he had dismembered her, and I hope I am exaggerating.
Two colleagues and supporters, so far, have asked for a turn in the fight and advertisement campaign. Torgersen and Paulk can be trusted to fight hard and not disgrace the banner.
In conclusion:
1. A contest where transgressions of unwritten, unadvertised rules are punished is not fair and open. I would say not worth competing in, but I have no financial interest, and do not care deeply about the future of the industry.
2. People who have no self-control with messaging tend to make the other side of a public fight look better.
3. I just finished reading Anderson’s Dark Between the Stars, based on the endorsement of Sad Puppies. It is a fair choice.
[…] it’s a good day at the Mad Genius Club. Kate Paulk (“Terry Pratchett and the Sadness of Puppies”) has revealed another reason the gatekeepers of the Hugos must […]
And that’s why Sad Puppies included a Terry Pratchett work in their slate. Oops, actually I don’t see Long Mars, A Slip of the Keyboard, Dragons at Crumbling Castle or Raising Steam listed. I don’t understand it.
Maybe, just maybe, they weren’t included because the Pratchett works that were eligible in those years weren’t actually – tragically – up to his standards. The works that should have been nominated and won are the ones like Thud, The Fifth Elephant (actually most of the Watch books qualify), and as far back as Making Pictures.
Or maybe the people collating and making suggestions just weren’t all that fond of Pratchett’s books. I’ve met a fair number who aren’t: most of them just don’t see past the surface to the multiple layers beneath.
Oh, Kate Paulk, No! It’s because if we aren’t ardent disemvowelers, we Have No Clue what is good work, and what isn’t. Why, last year, the RightCrowd™ just Knew that anything nominated in SP2 wasn’t any good. They didn’t even have to read it to know that.
The fact that I might like and believe something else written in the same year as a book by TP deserves more recognition is a symptom of my cismale gendernormative fascism,or political allegiance, not my personal reading preference. All The Best People assure me this is so.
Or maybe, if you took time to actually read what Brad said about his recommendations for SP3, he hadn’t read the books that were eligible this year. Oh wait, Long Mars was published, iirc, in 2015 which means it wouldn’t qualify for SP3. Nor does it mean Kate — or any number of other PTerry fans — didn’t nominate him. After all, Brad’s “slate” were recommendations, not a “you must vote for these”.
Oh, Amanda, you just don’t understand. We ALL march in lockstep, pushing scifi back into the 1950’s of the Fallout world, where all women are barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen in high heels and pearls. Where old, white authors work to further the depredations of capitalist fat cats and seek to bring about Dubble-ya Dubble-ya Three and finally get rid of the dern Rooskies. And them commies, too. Where we take our marching orders from the Bible and Rush Limbaugh, and don’t have to worry about silly things like free will and personal choice…
The problem with Terry Pratchett is that he wrote fun and entertaining works.
And fun and entertainment are not only bad, but obsolete. SJW Jon McIntosh thinks we’re in “urgent need of video games that aren’t fun”.
So of course an entertaining author has nothing to offer. Of course there can be nothing insightful or introspective hidden under the fun.
Bring on the preachy, boring shit! (Oh wait, they did.)
I sincerely hope that Sad Puppies 3 (and next year 4, under your guidance) wreak havoc on the smug condescension of the self-appointed arbiters of quality, who nonetheless consistently ignore quality. It would be delicious divine justice.
Why do people who are adamantly opposed to the views expressed on this website READ this website, and then make obviously flawed posts? Don’t they anything better to do?
Sorry, you’re forgetting Rule 1 of the Internet Arguing Checklist: Skim Until Offended.
Doing otherwise would require too much time away from disemvoweling trespassers on their territory, or giving each other pats on the back over how tolerant and enlightened they are. {sarc} tag applies.
Oh. I forgot the rule.
I do that all the time…
But right now, I’m 7% of the way through Sabrina Chase’s “The Long Way Home” and she has already grabbed me TWICE with her writing, THREE times if you include the cover. I think I’m going to enjoy this trilogy.
Thanks to Laura Montgomery, Author of “The Sky Suspended” and “Manx Prize” for recommending this series. I already had read and enjoyed “Jinxers” but I like this even more.
Y’all go on about yer business; I’m going back to work reading (snarf snarf).
It’s possible they don’t– not like rounding up mobs with quotes and telling them to go confront the bad guy is unusual.
I truly wonder if it’s time for the REST of fandom to stand up and come up with another award that is actually voted on by ALL the fans… And yes I’m a grumpy old white guy! So there… 😛 I’d call it the Somnium award… After all there are already 65 different awards for SF, what’s one more??>
We’d talked about a Human Wave award. There are quite a few awards that are focused on some think or another, like the Prometheus. More awards aren’t bad.
Someone (I remember who but I’m paraphrasing so I won’t pretend it’s a quote though I’m trying to be accurate) suggested that the result of all of this might be “their side” doing the same thing, getting multitudes of more people out to vote on nominations, and get all those people who don’t think like us motivated and involved. Might we not end up being… sorry?
Perhaps the fact that I’m not an elitist (nothing on “this side” is about being an elitist) is the reason that statements like that just blow my mind. No matter how many times it is said by no matter how many different people in no matter how many different ways that it’s not about getting our clique in to replace their clique… they’ll still project their own need for control and exclusion.
I’d actually like to see a Human Wave award because I frankly enjoy Human Wave stories and ‘the best’ Human Wave story would be a must-read then. This might end up opening it up outside the SFF genres but that’s not too much of an issue in my mind.
The reasons I have for supporting sad puppies:
1.) These social justice, individual injustice people are parasites par excellence. No matter what we build, they will find a way to worm in and “correct” it to their way. It’s their nature. So, creating something new would merely give them something else that they’d do the same thing to, yet again, in a few years.
2.) Parasites can’t build; they can only attach to something already built, and then destroy it. So when we push back, they have no fallback position, and we reclaim our old grounds and old toys.
3.) The more we push back, and reclaim old ground, the more we convince not only ourselves, but also all the bystanders that it is possible. These parasites rule in part because people believe their propoganda. Show it as the lie it is, and watch them rapidly become irrelevant.
4.) They’re paper tigers. Hell, even SWATing requires them to convince the dispatcher and the police that the prank call is real, in order to have any teeth… and that’s their only serious weapon. Once people no longer take them seriously, their weapons become worse than useless, they become ridiculous. Oooh, some vicious people tweeted mean lies about me to each other. So fierce! So high school!
Oh no question Dot… But they will continue to marginalize/ignore/etc. any who don’t pay the $$ for ‘membership’, once again excluding ~6 million people who actually DO read SF world wide…
So the SJW contingent running Worldcons completely ignored Terry Pratchett and that’s a crime? Don’t let the fact that he was a Guest of Honor in 2004 slow you down.
If this is really the reason “why Sad Puppies exist”, as you say, then maybe you can just stop now. 😀
Please try reading what I wrote instead of cherry-picking. In the meantime, there are plenty of other underappreciated authors, artists, and editors who don’t belong to the “correct” cliques, so Sad Puppies will be around for a while to encourage people to read/watch/look at and then nominate and vote..
(kate….shhh,,,i’m whispering this…she’s a troll… just ignore her, because maybe she’ll get mad and make some more stupid statements…which is pretty cool to watch, actually,,,)
You wrote a post where you bolded him having never won a Hugo, then spun your own theory as to why. You didn’t mention that he was nominated and turned down the nomination, which seems pretty darn relevant when examining theories about why he never won one. That sort of omission is bad, really bad: the sort that, if innocent, deserves at least a correction, if not a rethink.
Except for one little thing: that one nomination compared to say, Scalzi’s nominations for damn near every one of his novels starting with the first, Stross’s multiple nominations, and many, many others actually proves my point.
Those who are members of the in-group get showered with the perceived rewards, everyone else gets to scrabble for the rest.
Are you really going to tell me that Wintersmith or Thud! were lesser books than Scalzi’s first novel? (which was nominated that year).
Are you going to claim that McCaffrey’s rather patchy All The Weyrs of Pern was a more worthy nominee than Witches Abroad, Reaper Man, Small Gods, and Lords and Ladies?
If so, I suggest you check your CHORF privilege. If not, my argument stands as stated.
My apologies for derailing Hugo-related discussion, but a while back, Kate, you mentioned a SF alt history story you had read where “a young firebrand named De Gaulle starts of a chain of events paralleling the rise of the Nazis. ” Do you by any chance remember title/author/other information? Thanks in advance.
Worldcon totally ignores Terry Pratchett!
That’s why he was Guest of Honor in 2004.
http://www.noreascon.org/
Very good, dear. Now, read what I actually wrote, and my comments to the other accusations along this line. Then tell me that John Scalzi is so much better than Terry Pratchett that he deserves four times as many nominations without laughing.
After which, you may try the phenomenally difficult feat of reversion your severe case of recto-cranial inversion, removing your foot from your mouth, and attempting to make an on-topic remark.
I was a nominating/voting member of Worldcons for about 15 years from 1987, and nominated Terry’s work quite regularly in that period. The main reason he didn’t get on the ballot was because the Hugo is for work first published in the previous year, and with his work being first published in the UK, by the time his books were published in the U.S. they were too late to qualify, which was a huge frustration for us UK fans. Also don’t forget that the early Discworld books were not particularly commercially successful in their U.S. editions. So no, there wasn’t a huge anti-Terry conspiracy, it was just geography and publishing schedules, and to imply that Terry was an outsider to conventions is simply preposterous – he started out as a con-going fan, for goodness’ sake!
There’s a difference between being an outsider to conventions and an outsider to the Worldcon in-clique – it’s the latter I’m talking about.
I’d add that I have it on good authority that even though his US editions weren’t doing well (they had crappy distribution and crappier covers) there were a LOT of US fans importing from the UK – to the extent that Sir Terry would be at signings in the US with crowds around the block and his US agent at the time trying not to give the glare of death (I don’t have the authority to give more detail than this).
So despite you being the only person so far to advance a half-way plausible argument for Sir Terry having all of one Hugo nomination (which he declined) where the likes of John Scalzi have multiple nominations for far inferior works, my argument stands.
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