Congratulations to the Puppies, Both Sad and Rabid

If you haven't followed the saga of the Sad and Rabid Puppies, here's a good overview: THE HUGO WARS: HOW SCI-FI’S MOST PRESTIGIOUS AWARDS BECAME A POLITICAL BATTLEGROUND

The story begins, as ever, with a small group of social justice-minded community elites who sought to establish themselves as the arbiters of social mores. This group would decide who deserved a presence in SFF and who deserved to be ostracised.

Their victims are littered across the SFF community. In 2013, the Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) were targeted by a shirtstorm-like cyber-mob of digital puritans after one of their cover editions was deemed to be “too sexual.” The controversy did not die down until two of its most respected writers, Mike Resnick and Barry Malzburg, were dismissed from the publication. This occurred despite a vigorous counter-campaign by liberal members of the sci-fi community, including twelve Nebula award winners and three former presidents of the SFWA.

Unfortunately, the current crop of elite figures in the SFF community have become either apologists or out-and-out cheerleaders for intolerance and censorship. Redshirts author John Scalzi, a close friend of anti-anonymity crusader Wil Wheaton – was head of the SFWA at the time of the controversy and quickly caved in to activist pressure. This was unsurprising, given that he shared many of their identitarian views.

But Scalzi is, if anything, merely the moderate ally of a far more radical group of community elites. He hasn’t gone nearly as far as former SFWA Vice President Mary Kowal, who handles political disagreement by telling her opponents to “shut the fuck up” and quit the SFWA. Or former Hugo nominee Nora Jemisin, who says that political tolerance “disturbs” her. Or, indeed, the prolific fantasy author Jim C. Hines, who believes that people who satirize religion and political ideologies (a very particular religion, and a very particular ideology, of course) should be thrown out of mainstream SFF magazines.

...The Hugos have an advantage, though: they are difficult for a single group to dominate if others rise to challenge them. All one has to do to vote in the awards is pay a small membership fee to the World Science Fiction Convention. For the few who are brave enough to defend artistic freedom openly, the Hugos are a good place to make a stand.

That is precisely what is now happening. Ahead of 2013’s Hugo Awards, Larry Correia began making public blog posts about his nominations, inviting his readers to discuss and agree on a shared list of Hugo nominations, and vote collectively. The idea was to draw attention to authors and creators who were suffering from an undeserved lack of attention due to the political climate in sci-fi. The “Sad Puppies” slate was born.

(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.)

What began as a discussion among bloggers has turned into an annual event. Last year’s Sad Puppies slate was extraordinarily successful, with seven out of Correia’s twelve nominations making it to the final stage of the Hugos.

Pretty good, but this year more people joined in as there was some cross pollination from Gamergate. So what happened this year? First a little background. The nominating ballot has five choices in each category and there are 17 categories, for a total of 85 possible nominations. Rabid Puppies 2015 (the Vox Day slate) nominated 67 works for the final ballot. Of those, 58 earned a nomination. Vox has coverage here and here.

Here's Sad Puppies' Larry Correia:

I just want to make a comment about why I’m personally not on the list. I was contacted by the administrators on 3/20/15 and informed that Monster Hunter Nemesis was a finalist for best novel. I emailed them back the same day and turned it down. Whoever was next in line was then moved up to be a finalist in my place.

I refused the nomination for one simple reason. The Sad Puppies campaign isn’t about any one person. I felt that ultimately my presence would be a distraction from the overall mission.

The reason I refused my nomination is that as long as the guy who started Sad Puppies stayed in, the more our opposition would try to dismiss the whole campaign as being all about my ego, or some selfish personal desire to get award recognition. Nope. I really meant it when I said I don’t care about winning anything for myself. I hope this proves that once and for all.

To the fans who voted for me, I’m sorry for dropping out. But I want you to understand that I consider making the award represent more of fandom to be a far more important prize than another rocket ship lapel pin (I actually never even got the one from last year). Now I’m going to support the rest of our slate and read all of the nominated works to judge them fairly, and I’d ask for you to do the same.

I joined this year and if you haven't, for $40 you can still make an impact in 2015 because final voting hasn't begun yet. The SJW crowd is going to band together to vote "No Award." They'd rather deny anyone an award than risk a victory by racist-sexist-homophonic-lords-of-hate. If you join now, you can also nominate for next year's awards. You can sign up to be a supporting member here: Sasquan. Aside from being able to vote for quality science-fiction writing, you will receive a voting packet with many of the nominated e-books. I'm not sure how many works will be included, but it could easily exceed the value of the $40 two-year membership.