2016 Hugo Nominations Reaction
It’s funny how a year of steeling yourself for something doesn’t actually mask the taste of bile rising in your throat when it happens. It’s hardly a surprise that the Rabid Puppies got sixty-two works on the ballot beating their haul of fifty-eight last year. Until E Pluribus Hugo passes, the voting system is flawed in a way that made stopping the Puppies at this stage impossible. This ballot has been predictable since last year. Still, it’s sickening. Short Story, Novelette, Related Work, Graphic Story, Professional Artist, and Fanzine are all full-Puppy categories at present. All categories save for Best Editor Short Form and Best Novel are majority-Puppy. Most of what I have to say I said last year. You can buy the book if you want. But here’s some scattered and off-the-cuff thoughts on this year’s dogfucking.
First, as predicted, the Sad Puppies were a non-entity. That’s a little tough to judge given their new “we’re just a recommendation list” sheen of pointlessness, but it’s notable that the most conspicuous omission from their list, The Fifth Season, got a nomination in best Novel, and that in Fan Artist, a category where they had four picks, three of which were not on the Rabid Puppies slate, none of theirs made it on. Indeed, at a glance I can’t find anything that’s on their list, wasn’t an obvious contender anyway, and made it. These were Vox Day’s Hugos, plain and simple.
Second, let’s not have any silliness about pretending that what was picked reflects any agenda other than Vox Day’s spite. He’s been unambiguous that his sole goal this year is to disrupt the Hugos, not even making an effort to pretend that he was picking works on merit or because there’s actually some body of quality sci-fi he thinks is being overlooked by the awards. His only goal was to ruin things. The nominees exist only for that purpose. They are political, yes. Avowedly so. But their politics does not have even the barest shred of a constructive project. This is fascism shorn of everything but violent brutality – political in the sense of an angry mob kicking a prone body.
And so once again, the course is clear: we must resist. With every tool we have, we must resist. The highest priority, of course, is passing E Pluribus Hugo, the repaired nomination system that will serve to prevent this from happening again. Also important is No Awarding.
But, of course, that’s more complicated this year than last because of Vox’s tactic of poison pill nominees (which I also called last year, because for a supposedly brilliant tactician Vox sure is predictable). Some of these will hopefully correct themselves – both Stephen King and Neil Gaiman are occupying slots in all-Puppy categories and have the power to withdraw to make room for people that were kept off the ballot by Vox Day. I have a tough time coming up with any justification for such decorated writers not to do so.
Other categories are trickier.…