Do you sometimes feel a need to tell people who oppose you that they’re making a quite crazy tactical error?
Like everyone fighting to keep “us” wrong thinkers off awards back when?
I know why. It’s not so much that they hate us, see. They’re fighting for their rice bowls. The traditional, deeply academic writing and “art” that aims for a “select” “prestige” audience doesn’t pay. Arguably it never did.
Back in 2003 when I had to get a new agent, and all I had published was the Shakespeare series, which was classed as literary fantasy, I interviewed agent after agent who told me that I should do no more than a book every two years at most, and meanwhile on the strength of my being a FINALIST on a prestigious award, I should be applying for teaching jobs at various universities, and also for gigs writing for criticism magazines and such.
I kept telling them that was not what I wanted to do, and hitting a wall, because they couldn’t understand that I wanted to be a writer. A fiction writer. I already had a degree that allowed me to teach in college — and had already done so — and I could get non fiction writing gigs on my degree and background. Unfortunately what I wanted to do was write fiction for a living.
Of course the agents also didn’t understand I WANTED to write commercial fiction. One of them said “I don’t understand why you want to write schlock!”
Years later I found out that 10k was the maximum advance for literary fantasy (back then. Now it’s considerably lower) which averaged to 5k a year at a book every two years. So, of course you had to make living some other way.
So, most of the people who are desperate to get and keep getting awards are doing it because awards are the ticket to their actual money makers: i.e. lectures, paid appearances at various places, and such.
Our “side” broadly speaking? The people who write or do art for a living, and only want to do that?
We think awards are cool and nice to have. But we’re not going to fight for them tooth and nail. We might get enthusiastic for a little while, but it doesn’t last. Because it’s not our rice bowl.
If you find a lot of us descending on something and we claim awards for a year or three, and you chill and just let us?
We’ll be gone in three years or so, our attention turned elsewhere. And your awards will look all the more impressive for being truly inclusive. And we’ll think well of you.
The problem is the people whose rice bowl depends on it can’t let this happen.
They just can’t. And then sometimes there’s the “appearance of impropriety” whether true or not.
So, about the Dragon Awards.
Maybe it’s fighting for their rice bowl. Or maybe they are just confused?
Last night Raconteur Press was very excited:
And so were we all. Cedar has improved by leaps and bounds, and she is now at every level a professional cover artist. A GOOD one. So it was lovely to see her get the recognition she deserves.
Only something happened:
For substack link, here: Concerning the Dragon Awards
Now, never assume malice when it might be — and probably is — rank stupidity. Or strange clumsiness.
What’s weird in all this, Cedar isn’t even in any sense one of the troublemakers, except for hanging out in this corner with the scum and villainy that is us. Surely no one could be so petty as to blacklist her just because she posts at MGC, right?
So I thought to myself, I thought… I’m sure they have an excellent explanation. A completely fair and aboveboard one.
I’m sure the only reason they haven’t answered is that they are so busy with more important things.
But I know a lot of people are seething over this, and before we assume the worst about the Dragon awards, they should be given a full opportunity to explain themselves on the disappearance of Cedar from the ballot. Every possible chance, in fact.
In case some of you are also curious and want to ask why, here’s the link: https://awards.dragoncon.org/contact-us/
Be polite. Be clear. Let us know immediately of any answer you get, of course, and we’ll update this post.
UPDATE: Who had “stupidity” on their bingo card? Apparently they disqualified Cedar for “The use of AI tools.” (Because “someone told them” she used them. Note they didn’t even verify.)
Is anyone going to tell them that practically everyone is using those for covers now, and that they won’t actually be able to tell if people use AI, if they’re competent artists who do post-processing and integrating properly? No? Yeah, I say no. Let’s leave them the fun of finding it out. And what fun it will be. I look forward to their demanding nominated artists PROVE they didn’t use AI.
And in further compounding of stupidity, of course there is nothing in the rules about AI. Because of course there isn’t.
Mad Genius Club 
52 responses to “Dragon Dragon, Quite Contrary!”
Ya know, after going and doing my nightly check of our numbers and rankings, I’m finding it difficult to be all that upset. We’re holding down SIX of the top 100 SF anthologies, and with Cedar’s writing, EIGHT. So we’re getting the Benjamin Awards. I like those a lot more. I mean, our first Space Marines that we published LAST YEAR is in the top 100 right now. We’ll see what they say, if anything. I mean, if it’s the AI issue, just spit it out. We’ve never hidden the fact that Cedar has AI in her toolbox. And if they don’t want AI in the cover category, so be it. But at least be up front about it and SAY SO. We’re not bothered, really. Their award, their choice.
Yep. Benjamins are the best thing. I just would like an answer.
It’s <em>all</em> about the Benjamins, isn’t it?
Well, it’s also nice to know that people are buying them, because if they are buying them, they’re *reading* them too.
Likely unlike many of those more ‘prestigious’ notes… 🙂
I find their lack of willingness to comment quite worrisome.
Who has “technical error” in the pool of reasons they’re going to claim is why this happened?
Do not give them the benefit of the doubt. By this time, always assume enemy action.
Because that’s the sort of people they are. Venal, corrupt, and twisted by hatred. They would never dirty their hands delivering physical harm to you, but they’d cheer and lift a glass to toast whatever brought you down. They want you gone, and if that means dead, so be it.
These are not decent people. Stop pretending they are.
No notice, and no response to queries from both fans and her publisher?
This was deliberate. And the fact they won’t talk about it says they know they did something sketchy.
Emailed the contact and got a timely response including “Cedar Sanderson’s entry in the Best Illustrative Cover category had been created in part using Artificial Intelligence tools. As a consequence, we removed her cover for The Goblin Market from consideration because we don’t allow AI in our Art Show, Comic and Pop Artist Alley, Vendor Halls or the Awards. “
Issue resolved. Neither incompetence not malice.
Definitely incompetence. The rules say nothing about AI.
Also rank stupidity. I challenge them to prove no one else used AI. Even high ranking pros are using it for bits.
This is now a system where I can “denounce” anyone for AI.
I wish them joy of it.
Yep. What goes around…
I’d be more impressed if they’d contacted the artist before the email tsunami.
Or even responded to the publisher that contacted them to find out why she was removed.
Then why haven’t they removed the OTHER artists who used AI?
It’s malice. The rules for the competition said nothing about AI. You can’t go changing them after the fact because one of the other competitors complained.
Well, yeah. But it’s more fun than that, John…they changed them only on their Faceplant wall without changing them on their site.
This is the same crap we’ve seen with the Hugos. It was only a mere matter of time, really.
Best awards are always filthy lucre.
Well, yeah. But it’s more fun than that, John…they changed them only on their Faceplant wall without changing them on their site.
This is the same crap we’ve seen with the Hugos. It was only a mere matter of time, really.
Best awards are always filthy lucre.
Given they did not contact Cedar, nor RacPress, and are now claiming some never before published “rule” as justification, I am absolutely assuming malice at this point.
Honestly? REALLY good assumption. Even now that they finally got back to someone.
Honestly? REALLY good assumption. Even now that they finally got back to someone.
Only if you leave out the rather critical steps of
Announcing those rules IN ADVANCE,
Treating ALL entries to the same level of scrutiny.
BEFORE any contracts are signed for exhibition space.
NOT resolved. Now, they can get away with this for an award nominee, as there is no contract between them and the nominee.
BUT – as a matter of contract law, if there is no clause in the vendor, exhibitor, or other presentations for which artists are paying them – and there is no traceable implied contract clauses that are from the exhibition rules – they are absolutely in breach of contract with the artists. If they have already accepted payment, and have expended it, they could be in SERIOUS trouble. Especially as not just the exhibition payment can be included in a suit, but also any unrefundable ancillary expenses such as hotel reservations, shipping charges, transportation rentals, etc.
Idiocy. They can make whatever rules they want, include them by reference in contracts, but they CANNOT change the contract once they have made it.
My guess is AI, and yes, they should say so, and should have said so before putting her on the ballot if that is the answer.
Could be when they sent out the official ballots, someone missed a line, are all the other people there? I noticed that the order of people on the list has changed from the screen shot, so if it was re-typed, human error is possible.
The bright side of the coin was that she was nominated, even if for a little while, and that shows popularity.
Except there are other covers that used AI tools. Who were not removed.
However, that is what they ended up claiming.
And I say “claiming” because if it were true, they would not have tried to be sneaky.
They would have publicly stated “oops, as a clarification, artwork cannot use AI in any form,” contacted Cedar, verified with all other nominated artists that they didn’t use AI, and done something like write “Sorry, miscommunication on our end, we meant for the No AI rule in the totally different categories to also be included in this one.”
Agreed, it should have been applied across the board, retroactively, as they did with Cedar’s if they were going to do it with one, they should have done it with all.
They replied last night to my email and are claiming it’s because of her use of AI. Meh. The timing makes it feel like they announced the nominations then someone complained and they pulled her from the list. I am not impressed with their response.
And they figured nobody would notice, because she’s not a “name,” which is why they did such a cruddy thing as removing her without telling anyone.
All I know, is that if it had been one of the covers She’s done for me?
They’d be talking to my lawyers this morning.
Since Photoshop now integrates AI tools, this is some dumbassamine.
It means anyone could “denounce” anyone else at any time for AI use. And be correct.
Can someone find my eyes? They rolled under the sofa.
Sorry, the kitties are playing with them. Indy! You give that eyeball back right now!
It’s hairy
After it hit Insty, apparently Dragon too notice.
https://raconteurpress.substack.com/p/dragon-con-responds-to-our-inquiry
They finally contacted somebody.
Having been an artist during the beginning of the computer boom, the professionals merely hid they were using filters for their work. Heck, graphic artists routinely swiped, but told newbs, they were able to do such detailed work from memory. If you couldn’t, you weren’t a good artist.
Cedar’s crime is being HONEST.
Heck, I remember artists lying about using tone sheets. Graphic arts is ‘meet deadline, sell product’. Which usually equates to pleasing on the eye.
I remember those days, too. When any “computer assisted” art was banned in any competition.
I don’t use AI (yet) in the very little bit of art that I dabble in – but I do use a LOT of the digital tools to do things that were at a VERY high level of professional art before the digital age. Things that I do not have the years of intensive practice to accomplish manually.
Oh, you would like to qualify for a Dragon Award?
You will need to find a manual typewriter to write your story on, or long hand, have your editor work with a red pencil and a dictionary (physical, not electronic), and have one of the hundred or so hobbyist printers who work with manual printing presses print and bind your work-fortunately, they are hobbyists and probably won’t charge more than minumum wage plus costs. Your cover artist will need to create a woodblock to print your cover, with hand tools, because computerized tools certainly use AI.
AI is stuffed into everything, you see. Write on a modern computer? It’s built in. Your editor uses a modern computer? It’s built in. It’s in Windows, Photoshop, everything. It’s in the phone’s software I’m typing this on, like as not. It’s probably on the little Linux computer I use for editing.
It doesn’t matter if you like it or not. You can’t get away from the stuff these days.
I bet you every single story in every single category was spellchecked using AI. Every single publishing software used AI. Not one of those is pure and untainted, and Dragon Awards should pull them all.
Heck, their website host likely uses AI. smacks wordpress Ours does. Because of course it does. (WPDE, I told you to shut up and get out of my way!) Badly, because WPDE. To be consistant, DragonCon should remove all their presence from the internet and go to strictly Postal Mail communications.
LOLOL. you should send that to dragon con.
Well…if you’re using LibreOffice, it probably does have a smidge of it going on.
It won’t likely be in the core function of VIM, might be in Emacs (Everything is in Emacs, after all. That was a goal for Stallman, wasn’t it?) , and I doubt it’s in VS Code unless you add it as an extension (and the Intellisense extensions MS makes suck for utilization of RAM…)
AI now is interesting fodder for disputes, and for difficulties resolving disputes.
For example, the electrical engineers have that theory about sampling rate of a signal, and information content of the signal reconstructed from that sample. An MA in arts could get that without any exposure or homework in information storage theory, and hence be entirely unpersuaded of that thinking.
There is hearsay from electrical engineering land that neural net methods are simply a complicated combination of digital filters. Inside the theory of digital filters, there would be a way of defining this level of filter complexity as allowable, and that amount as unallowable. Working outside of all that CS type theory, why should we allow the digital filters that artists have used for decades routinely as a tool?
Fundamentally, for decades we have accepted digital art, and digital sampling of analog art, as art. Those have been allowed under the previous rules of our consensus. I would suggest that there are relatively few lawyers, and relatively few artists, who are capable of defining AI in off the cuff statements, and doing so in a way that both detects all possible AI test cases, and does not accidently exclude digital art.
Then there are uncanny valley tests. Uncanny valley tests have variation from person to person, and it is possible for one person to find entirely human created styles uncanny.
In at least one of the LLM lawsuits, it has been claimed that the parties seeking damages got their ‘copyright infringement’ by over and over feeding the infringed text to the model.
Disputes get resolved when either a) both parties can have a meeting of the minds b) both can have trust in a third party to resolve the dispute. Arguably, A) will not be true for AI disputes anywhere near soon. For B), the processes and statements of those third parties become a bit important.
At some point, a decision was made.
If it were made before the contest, it would have been reasonably competent to adjust the text of the rules to clearly indicate this.
If it were made during the contest, it would have been reasonably competent to make a formal announcement prior to implementation, and try to implement the sorting to cover all AI uses.
The reported circumstances make it sound like it was not a full team decision, and was made after votes were summarized, and before the ballot was emailed.
If this was so, it might have been reasonable to conclude that voting for that category was compromised and could not be addressed, and that the whole result would be voided.
Anyway, there is an argument that gets made that X machine should not exist, because it puts occupation Y out of work. Generally, I am not super persuaded by this, because it is a good thing that lethal or maiming occupations like ditch digging go away. Specifically? I am not super fond of the BAs, MAs, etc. because I am prejudiced that they are the supposedly educated idjits actively making society worse. IE, some of the ‘scholarly’ occupations which are mentally maiming, and which leave those invested in them potentially a danger to others. (Seriously, how hard is it to understand ‘even if academics say that they speak for the poor, that does not mean that they do, nor does it allow the academics to make a terror campaign against those poor okay’?)
I think one of the tests for if someone is mentally maimed is how well they can wrap their heads around other people behaving in wildly alien to them ways. Which circles back to navigating disputes around AI.
I love the commentary here, for the depth of insight and the respectful disagreements, when such occurs.
Having recently completed my DragonCon ballot, this particularly pissed me off.
I sent their admin contact an email noting my objection to their non-process and requesting that they never darken my doorway again, with “harsh language deleted” as my second paragraph. 🙂
I don’t support authors whom I can not either read with pleasure or for education, nor do I financially support bullies or those who hate me because I have a mind and use it for my own purposes, rather than for their agendas.
Around January or December they announced the no AI on their Facebook page. I commented then on how were they going to enforce it. And would they pay artists who were accused falsely. I don’t remember any official replies.
It wasn’t in the RULES. They can’t expect people to follow their FB page. Many people aren’t on FB.
The Woke, Sarah, don’t give a damn there. It was, “announced,” therefore it’s the rules. It’s how these clowns WORK.
Do they reference their Farcebook page in any of their contracts for exhibition space? If not, the “rule” is null and void when it bangs up against the law of torts.
The AI stuff is just an excuse. But we knew this, Sarah.
I kind of wrote off D*C when they threatened to HURT people that couldn’t wear masks for medical reasons and had the doctor documentation for the same. When they didn’t punish the conduct, it became clear they got co-opted by the Woke crowd we bemoan regularly.
Cedar’s part of our crowd, Sarah, even if she’s not the firebrand you or I are on this subject. John’s got the rights of this- it’s malice.
As I’ve given up on D*C, I’ve kind of given up on the awards as well- because they’ve been co-opted by the likes of Tor, etc. like the Hugos. It’s not QUITE the warning label the Hugos convey…yet…but it’s getting there. Swiftly- from things like this.
Prohibiting the use of AI as a tool for artists is like prohibiting the use of pre-mixed paints. Real artists should make their own oil paints from scratch, not buy tubes of paint that have been mass-produced on machines! The artistry comes from the person using the tool, not the tool itself. Cedar’s cover art far exceeds what I could do using exactly the same AI tools – and that’s all that’s needed to show that the artist is the human, not the tool.
Jeez — when I was still doing old-school art, I used acrylics because turps make me nauseous. Are they going to expect me to synthesize my own acrylic resin from chemical feedstocks?
But seriously, I’m thoroughly disgusted, enough to put my money where my mouth is by buying a copy of Goblin Market. And not just a digital one, but a paperback to set on a shelf where everyone can see it.
And on my LiveJournal I’m putting together a list of links to blog posts about the situation, so people can see at a glance what’s being said about it:
https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1573057.html
Yep.
I thought the nominations list looked a bit Nebula/Hugo. Seems I was right.
Oh well. I sent my ballot off already, but next year they get a hearty F- Off! unless something -amazing- gets done to fix this. You don’t get to “discover” new and previously unlisted rules after nominations have closed. That is not how honesty works.
Dear Lefties, you can keep doing this but all it means is that we’ll find some other way around, over or through you.
I dumped a nastygram on the DragonCon admins and told them to delete my info (I had recently completed my ballot) because of this mess, and their stupid decisions.
As for the antique solution, I do have access to parchment, iron/oak gall ink, dip pens, and pre 16th Century equivalent mineral based paints, in case an illuminated manuscript is needed.
Copying text takes a little longer, about a month for a twenty page quire at one hundred fifty to three hundred words per page. 🙂
my world is either getting smaller or larger, not sure which. But I feel lucky to know two award nominated cover artists. Cedar and Julee Brand.