whatsinaname
Member
So I very recently learned of the mess that has become of this year Hugo awards (the seeds of which might have been sown a couple of years ago).
A group of people have been campaigning and bloc voting for nominations, with the group's efforts being directed towards "balancing" what they see as nominations and wins that have been moving away from more established/conservative writers.
http://www.dailydot.com/geek/hugo-award-nominees-sad-puppies/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat...puppies_took_over_the_sci_fi_nominations.html
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/09/george-rr-martin-right-wing-broken-hugo-awards
http://grrm.livejournal.com/417125.html
A group of people have been campaigning and bloc voting for nominations, with the group's efforts being directed towards "balancing" what they see as nominations and wins that have been moving away from more established/conservative writers.
http://www.dailydot.com/geek/hugo-award-nominees-sad-puppies/
Each year, the Hugo Awards are voted on by paid members of Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention. Fans nominate their favorite books, movies, and commentators, and the most popular choices make it onto a shortlist of five nominees per category. People then vote for the eventual winners, which are revealed at Worldcon in August.
This year's nominees were announced on Saturday, and most of them came directly from a Gamergate-affiliated campaign known as Sad Puppies. By bloc-voting for a specific slate of anti-progressive authors, editors, and fans, the Sad Puppies managed to game the selection process in every major category. And yes, they did choose that name for themselves.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat...puppies_took_over_the_sci_fi_nominations.html
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (last year), the Hugo Awards seemed to undergo a seismic change. Top prizes recognized a generation of younger, more diverse writers, with names like Ann Leckie, Kameron Hurley, and John Chu, and fans celebrated what appeared to be enriched levels of awareness/receptivity in the air. But then things took a distinctly Gamergate-tinged turn. Authors Brad R. Torgerson and Larry Correia re-upped a campaign called Sad Puppies (originally Sad Puppies Think of the Children, an ironic send-up of liberal bleeding hearts) that had achieved modest success in 2014, elevating a few ordained works to that years Hugo longlist.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/09/george-rr-martin-right-wing-broken-hugo-awards
http://grrm.livejournal.com/417125.html
George RR Martin has waded into the nasty, nasty fight surrounding this years Hugo awards, laying out why he believes that a group of right-wing science fiction writers have broken the prestigious prize beyond repair.
The shortlists for the long-running American genre awards, won in the past by names from Kurt Vonnegut to Ursula K Le Guin and voted for by fans, were announced this weekend to uproar in the science fiction community, after it emerged that the line-up corresponded closely with the slates of titles backed by certain conservative writers. The self-styled Sad Puppies campaigners had set out to combat what orchestrator and writer Brad Torgersen had criticised as the Hugos tendency to reward literary and ideological works.