October 17, 2015
Pavlovian Prizes
I started to post on this some time ago, but could not find he words or the time and, in any event, felt I needed to cool my jets as I was being inordinately vexed by a matter that, on its face, was fairly trivial.
*********************************
Anyway, I've mentioned before why the Hugo Awards this year bothered me so.
Well, it's been a month and a half and this still bugs me.
Earlier this year, at the World Science Fiction Convention...
"Oh crap! Please don't talk about THAT out in the open!"
"I got's family"
OK...below the fold it goes.
First, a quick review: Unhappy with the type of works that the Hugo Awards (Sci-Fi's most prestigious awards) had been going to over the last several years, writer Brad R. Torgersen and a few others organized a slate of authors and asked fans to consider them. They also advertised the fact that anyone with a World-Con membership could vote, and suddenly a LOT of people realized that they could actually be involved in their hobby in a meaningful and relevant way.
Note that people who were nominated by this group got harassed, defamed and were made into industry pariahs. When they went to the con their awards were nullified and they got little wooden sphincters to rub in the fact that they were disapproved of by the powers that be.
Well, there is another aspect to this...
Several authors, bewildered at finding themselves in a crapnado of abuse that they did not understand (some didn't even know they'd been nominated), decided that this was not the hill to die on and asked that their names be removed from the slate.
Which brings us to this...
It turns out that there was another, unofficial, award ceremony at World Con this year...
They gave special awards to several people, including everybody who had knuckled under to the harassment and intimidation. More specifically, they gave awards to those who denounced who they were directed to.
Carrots and sticks...
I'll withhold judgement on the authors themselves. A good case can be made that a shiny metal rocket is, indeed, not the hill to die on, and, given the defamatory lies that were being told about the Sad Puppies, it is possible and even likely that the denunciations were sincere and well intentioned.
However, I've studied enough history to be quite fearful of movements that demand that people censure and struggle against with sufficient alacrity and verve, any association with those that they designate as unapproved persons or ideas.
This is just toxic.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
05:48 AM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 432 words, total size 4 kb.
1
I hadn't heard about these. My level of respect for GRRM, while not high to begin with, has dropped immensely.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sat Oct 17 22:46:12 2015 (a12rG)
2
Moreover, GRRM certainly had to have been leaked the results prior to the show in order to know to whom he should give his awards.
Posted by: Mauser at Sun Oct 18 19:16:36 2015 (TJ7ih)
34kb generated in CPU 0.0154, elapsed 0.3206 seconds.
71 queries taking 0.3102 seconds, 359 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
71 queries taking 0.3102 seconds, 359 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
