Wheels within Wheels

So, the 2015 Hugos have been awarded, and it’s now obvious that the in-group that has controlled the awards for a number of years felt that it was better not to make awards than to let the wrong people (or those supported by the wrong people) win.

I didn’t vote in every category – I won’t vote if I’m not conversant with the nominees. I feel that it’s a matter of integrity not to vote for or against things I haven’t read or watched. Given that half or more of the votes in categories dominated by Puppy nominees were for “no award” and a number of people stated that they were going to vote that way without reading any of the nominated works, it’s obvious that many people don’t believe the same way. I’d be very interested in seeing how many of the “no award” votes had only no award votes, and how many of them cast votes ranking nominees in one or more categories.

I watched the first two hours of the livestream, although I missed the opening skit. I must say, I was disappointed but not surprised by the sniggering about the asterisk being the official emblem of this year’s Hugo awards, David Gerrold’s little “happy dance” when the audience cheered that “no award” won in the Best Related Work category, and winner speeches that included statements that “Black lives matter” and “I’d like to thank The Patriarchy.” I went to bed around that time, but Mr. Gerrold apparently said at some later time in the ceremony that while cheering “no award” was acceptable, booing it was not.

As I said, I was disappointed but not surprised – this is the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from organized fandom. It’s a major reason why I’ve not been active in local fandom for a number of years, although whether I gafiated or fafiated depends on your point of view. I’ve talked about this before, but apparently only in comments on other websites. There is a widespread presumption in fandom that everyone in fandom is at least liberal, if not further to the left, and the people who aren’t are stupid, evil, or worse, and are certainly not due any consideration or politeness.

It leads to an environment in which people feel comfortable making statements denigrating conservatives, conservative ideas, and Republicans. The “logic” seems to be, “These are my views, and I’m smart, therefore I’m right, and anyone who disagrees is both stupid and incorrect, but there’s nobody here like that, right?” I don’t like arguing, so I prefer not to go places where I get stressed, but it’s been pointed out that abdicating the field in that way is the sort of thing that helped allow the SJW takeover of the field.

Getting back to the Hugos, it also leads to the way the Puppy nominees and backers have been characterized by the gatekeepers. I’ve never met Larry Correia and Vox Day, but I have met Sarah Hoyt, and the widespread characterization of them and the Puppy nominees as being “straight white males writing about straight white males” can only be considered accurate if you say that the anti-Puppy forces are allowed to assign sex and ethnicity regardless of biology or consistency.

I’ll admit that, while I really liked and was impressed by many of the Puppy nominees, I don’t consider all of them to have been Hugo-worthy. However, even the worst of them was better than some of last year’s highly-touted nominees (“If You Were Attacked by Cardboard Stereotypes, My Love,” for example).

I’ve looked at a few of the Hugo roundup and response posts, and over at Vox Day’s site, some commenters are blaming the Puppy voters for voting “no award,” which is ridiculous to those who’ve been following what he and others have said. Basically, this year they played it straight; next year they’ll vote to burn down the awards, since the people afraid of the awards going to the wrong people have led the way. As Vox Day pointed out, the official announcement didn’t even mention the categories in which no award was made.

There were five categories in which no award was made this year. That matches the number of “no awards” in all of the prior history of the Hugos. Personally, I don’t believe that the nominees this year were that incredibly and historically bad. The gatekeepers have shown the extent to which they’re willing to go to keep control of the awards. It will be interesting, and likely disheartening, to see what happens next.