You’ve all been wondering about these awards, haven’t you? Even some people who don’t care about science fiction have been curious. This is the year politicking and block voting came to the fore, with several categories tainted by a slew of nominations from two right-wing niche voting cliques, the Sad and Rabid Puppies, led by people like the Odious Vox Day. If they couldn’t win a popular vote by, you know, being popular, they were determined to conquer by being disciplined.
Here’s the list of Hugo Award winners, announced last night. Note that in the list, the Sad/Rabid Puppy slate of nominations is listed in red (by the way, being listed in red doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a Right-Wing Work of Evil…just that it was nominated by a Right-Wing Axis of Evil). The winner in each category is listed first, in bold.
I was hoping that Ancillary Sword
would win best novel, but instead a book called The Three-Body Problem
The interesting response to the Puppies, though, is that in all the categories that were filled with Puppy-nominated stuff, Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Editor, Best Related Work — where there was no alternative to Puppy poop — the same winner was announced: NO AWARD. There are no Puppy winners at all. Some of those works could have even been respectable, but getting slathered with Puppy love was the kiss of death.
I don’t consider that a victory for the anti-Puppies, but a sort of best-of-a-bad-situation reaction to diminish the influence of bad actors on the awards. But guess who has declared victory?
Vox Day! Not a single nominee of his choosing won any awards, but this is a triumph because he has declared that the Hugos need to be burned down in their entirety
, and getting the SF community to turn their back on him in five categories was exactly what he was planning all along. He’s also planning to pull this nonsense again next year.
It seems to me, though, that if your goal is to have a lasting impact on a genre, painting big bullseyes on proponents of your ideology and daring everyone to shoot them down is somewhat counterproductive. Not that Vox Day will be clever enough to figure that out.
If you’re interested, they Hugo committee is also considering a rule change to reduce the impact of bloc voting. Sounds reasonable and fair.
Barbra Streisand effect, perhaps?
Also, isn’t the claim of an attempt to “have a lasting effect on a genre” what those fruitcakes claimed? If so, it’s a reasonable supposition they were, and still are, lying: Remember Rule One, “Nutters Lie”.
I love the Ancillary series, and still I agree that Three Body Problem deserved the win. It’s a great book and the sequel (The Dark Forest) just became available in English. My only regret in picking up the series is that the final book in the trilogy has not yet been translated to English, and goodness knows when I’ll be able to find out what comes next.
I LOVED the Three Body Problem, and I’m happy it won. Anne Leckie is also tremendously talented, and she’s got a Hugo in her future, no doubt.
Oh, and also – I love the fact that the Sad Puppies made a big noise about their unified campaign to push certain books forward, and instead of mounting a counter-campaign (which would have resulted in SOMETHING winning in each category), the rest of SF-readerdom just voted for the books they loved. Gave the puppies exactly the amount of time, energy, and acknowledgment they deserved.
@doublenerd:
“Death’s End” is scheduled for release on April 5, 2016 on amazon.de, as hardback and kindle edition.
For all their clamouring that SJWs destroy the good stuff, it is -again- the bigoted side who would rather destroy their own playthings (in this case, the SF genre) than share: “No girls allowed, and if it means torching down the clubhouse, than so be it”. It is thus rather strange that Vox is whining about scorched earth. Only possible diagnosis: a massive amount of projecting, and a total lack of self-reflection.
I haven’t read The Three Body Problem but everything else I’ve seen Ken Liu involved with has been very good. You can read some of his work on dailysciencefiction.com.
dawngabriel, Ann (not Anne) Leckie has a Hugo in her past: Ancillary Justice won ‘best novel’. So I wasn’t expecting Ancillary Sword to win this year, good though it is (so looking forward to Ancillary Mercy!)
I often juggle several books, and I’m afraid I haven’t finished The Three-Body Problem: I’ll get back to it, but I keep pushing it down the stack, because for me the writing clunks. How much that is due to the translator, I don’t know. The Goblin Emperor was a little lightweight, but very enjoyable, and I thought it was in with a shout.
As for VD and the puppies: their reactions have been as predicted. Apparently they won a great victory, they’re very angry about it, the stupid Hugos don’t matter anyway, and they’ll be back to ruin them again next year, but they’ll also create their own awards, with blackjack and hookers.
If the list at the link is accurate, there is a puppy winner in the category Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form; the winner is Guardians of the Galaxy which is given in red.
I also love Leckie’s Ancillary series – not long till the next one :-) – and I think she did get a Hugo for Ancillary Justice in 2014.
As Delift #9 said, there was one puppy winner. A minuscule win, but it is why some of that crowd are screaming at how they won.
No Award was added to the ballot in 1959. That year, two categories got it: Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form, and Best New Writer. Until last night, it won only three more times, all for long form drama (basically, a movie.) As of this morning, it has been given out ten times.
On the upside, though, this has been the biggest Worldcon ever. The controversy has prompted more people buy voting memberships, which brought in close to $200,000 more than organizers probably would have had. As an attending member this year, let me tell you that the extra money really shows: nice food in Hospitality, more shuttle buses between the hotels running more often, and few other perqs. So thanks, guys! Sad puppies may be sad, but I’m having fun.
Gregory in Seattle
Guardians of the Galaxy is a big-budget Marvel Hollywood movie, and stands in stark contrast to the other puppy nominees. GotG won despite being a puppy nominee, and is sad the puppies tried to smear the movies reputation.
Yeay, Orphan Black won one!
Wired has a very good article up that gives background information and analysis: Who Won Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards, and Why It Matters.
Beale (VD) said before the results were announced that no matter what happened, he would consider it a victory and declare it as such. This means we have no way of knowing what outcome he wanted other than that people pay attention to him.
I’m relieved to see the Puppies so thoroughly rejected, after feeling a bit guilty that I didn’t join to vote against them myself.
OptimalCynic @ 7
To clarify, Ken Liu is the translator of Three Body Problem, while Cixin Liu (no relation) is the author. Ken also got to accept the Hugo and give his own speech before reading the author’s.
Incidentally, more works originally published in translation (both the Best Novel and Best Novelette were translated from other languages) won than Sad/Rabid Puppy picks.
Why exactly did they glom onto Guardians? For a cheap victory?
@Rey Fox
Probably.
Guardians of the Galaxy would have been a contender for best Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form regardless of the puppies’ support.
In a sense, Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the most important winners of the night. You can point to it to show that people didn’t vote against the Puppy slate or No-Award categories the Puppies ran merely because the works were Puppy-nominated — people judged the Puppy works and found them almost entirely wanting, less worthy of an award than not giving the award in many cases. They voted for Guardians because it was worth it, despite its nomination source.
I voted for The Goblin Emperor for best novel, basically because I liked it the best, and placed Ancillary Sword second. TBP wasn’t bad; I certainly appreciated the early scenes of the Cultural Revolution and Maoist China (I can’t really say “enjoyed”) and the revelation of the relationship between the MMORPG and the rest of the plot, but I was disappointed that it ended just as it was getting really interesting. It wasn’t until later that I found out that it was the first of a trilogy. I still feel that it was talked up by those who were rating it highly as a synecdoche for the whole trilogy.
I think that as far as this year’s Hugos goes, the success of No Award is really the best that could be done with a bad situation. To abuse the tired war metaphors a little more, it was fighting back against a sneak attack, blunting it to a mere draw rather than an overrun. Now we get to gird our loins for the next attack, which may be more comprehensive and better planned. We won’t be able to count on some careless Puppy picks getting denominated in 2016. Heck, if Beale has any sense at all, he’ll put some actually good works on the slate, and get all the non-puppies arguing amongst ourselves.
I was hoping Ann Leckie would win. I found some parts of Three Body Problem to be weak, most notably the lack of women in the modern day strand of the book. On the other hand, I did find the female scientist in the Cultural Revolution strand to be fascinating. I want to add more detail, but this comment would then start veering into spoiler territory.
Ken Liu released his first novel around spring. Grace of Kings is definitely worth reading if you want a story that uses a non european basis for epic fantasy.
It seems to me that the best way to “game the system” is to write superlatively good SF.
If you can’t do that, don’t expect a Hugo.
Not a hard concept, really.
Anri @ 23, the other way is to motivate people to nominate, especially in the downballot categories. If you like reading short stories for the Hugos, try to read some during the year and, when you find one that you think ‘I would not be unhappy if this won a Hugo next year’, stick a note somewhere with the title and the link. (And to note that even if you can’t read all of everything out there, all you need are five things that you wouldn’t be unhappy if they won a Hugo.)
(I also need to take my own advice here.)
Actually, that would be my ‘win’ condition. I’m assuming that Vox Day is beyond hope, but if the Sad Puppies, instead of whining about overly literary short fiction and Social Justice Warriors, posted reading lists* of ‘these are awesome things released and this is why they are awesome, go read these’, and other people did the same, and we all talked about awesome books rather than trying to do the metaphorical equivalent of shoving someone else’s books off the table and demanding that the other people at the table only look at your collection (or the stuff from your publishing house, Vox Day).
* And not one that suspiciously had as many entries as nominations.
Back when this Sad Puppies bullshit started, there were several groups and individuals having giveaways for memberships. I was fortunate enough to win one. It was fun voting and knowing I contributed.
No, I didn’t vote for Sad Puppies because goddamn do those nominations suck. Except for GoG, which I had no fucking idea it was nominated by them. Considering that movie as a part of Sad Puppies never crossed my mind.
The solution is an effective one — a form of proportional representation. Block voting for multiple winners is one of the worst possible voting systems — if you can vote for 5 candidates and the top 5 vote-getters are elected, an bare majority of voters can control all 5 seats.
For the record, this is the kind of voting system that should be used for legislatures, but few in the USA are aware of the issue with the voting systems. If you’re in the USA, Fairvote is the organisation which promotes proportional representation there, and they should get your support. (The details of the systems that should be used are slightly different and more sophisticated, but the goal is the same).
Quite a while ago you asked in what fantasy worlds women played a substantial role. Only now I remember the children trilogy (though it’s a fine read for adults as well) Children of Mother Earth by Thea Beckman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thea_Beckman
https://anotherotherblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/review-children-of-mother-earth-by-thea-beckman/
Yup – most main characters are female.
How appropriate then…
…that they got spanked.
Wait, Vox Day had himself get pushed as Best Editor, Long Form and Short Form by his buddies?! And he talks about people unfairly playing the system or whatever? What a skeevy guy.
One of the Puppy nominations won (Guardians of the Galaxy; Best Dramatic Presentation, long form), but to be honest it was such a self-evidently good movie that it could weather the taint of a puppy nomination.
In all other cases the non-puppy nominations won. I stand by my original assessment; the puppies want bad sci-fi and bad fantasy.
The weakness of the Three Body Problem is that it postulates the closest stellar system is inhabited by a technological civilization. That kind of statistical impossibility destroys the necessary “wilful suspension of disbelief”.
Saganite:
Oh, it’s worse than that. See that publisher, Castalia House, which appears on a number of the puppy noms? That’s VD’s own company, which now gets to put “nominated for a Hugo award” on a bunch of its products.
@32 Moggie
That’s bizarre and doubly skeevy. But from the perspective of a blatant opportunist it sure makes sense to use these tools that follow him and the drummed-up outrage for monetary gain like that. Thanks for the info.
I also haven’t read The Three-Body Problem, but it’s well titled. I’ll have to look it up.
I’m kind of loving the twitter feed in the sidebar through the link to the winners list, too. So much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The end of men! The end of men! Oh noes!
Ann Leckie’s first novel, Ancillary Justice, won ALL THE MAJOR SFF AWARDS last year.
Nebula
Hugo
British SF Society
Clarke
and several other awards, besides.
Yes, I thought it was an awesome book. I thought Ancillary Sword was not quite as awesome, but definitely an excellent book. And I have Ancillary Mercy on pre-order already.
I don’t consider that a victory for the anti-Puppies, but a sort of best-of-a-bad-situation reaction to diminish the influence of bad actors on the awards. But guess who has declared victory? Vox Day! (Emphasis added.)
If I may quote a sarcastic line from Eric Frank Russell’s Wasp, Vox Day and the Puppies have been “beating triumphant retreat before a demoralized enemy advancing in utter disorder.”
I raided the used bookstores this weekend, I couldn’t find my old Anne McCaffery Pern novels, and was able to find the whole Harper Hall trilogy at the shop next door. Had a craving to re-read those.
Jack/26: While I’m certainly a supporter of Proportional Representation in the general case, I believe every PR system I’m familiar with has a major flaw for use in a vote like the Hugo Awards shortlisting.
List Systems: require explicit slates to be constructed, which I think is exactly what they don’t want.
Single Transferable Vote: the preference listing would either be impractically large (all eligible works? all works nominated by at least one person in a new pre-shortlisting stage?), or have to have some non-proportional pre-filter applied to it to get the ballot to a manageable size, or to get people to specify a useful number of preferences would need some sort of templated voting (like Australia) which goes back to slates again…
Votes from Hat: can give highly disproportionate results in lower-probability cases; likely to be considered unfair by losers; integrity of hat owner would be questioned.
Is there another PR system I’m not familiar with which would work in the Hugo’s case? I’d be very interested to read about it if so.
The reason the Pups could pack the Hugo ballots was, as noted, the fact that Hugo nominations are strictly “first past the post”, and in consequence, a small group of disciplined bloc nominators can overwhelm a disorganized majority of people who just nominate whatever they feel like. This is a known problem—has been known for several decades—but since the general opinion throughout fandom has been that bloc nominations are a dick move, nobody believed that anybody would want to be a big-enough asshole to actually do that.
Well, now we finally have somebody—a number of somebodies, in fact—who absolutely are willing to be That Asshole. And if their public pronouncements are any indication, they absolutely are willing to continue being That Asshole for an indefinitely long period of time..
A couple of anti-slate measures were passed at the Worldcon Business Meeting. One of them, called “E Pluribus Hugo”, changes the protocol by which nominations are counted. The people who created EPH include a gentleman named Bruce Schneier, who some of you may have heard of. One of the design goals for EPH was that it yield the same results as “first past the post” nominations when there’s no slate.
EPH bears something of a family resemblance to Single Transferable Vote, but is interestingly different from STV. It uses a number of “elimination rounds”, removing one nominee at a time from a category, until there’s only the five nominees that go onto the actual ballot for that category.
In each elimination round, each nominator’s list of nominees is given 1 (one) point, divided evenly amongst all candidates on the list. If the nominator nominated 2 nominees, each of their nominees ends up with 0.5 points; if 5 nominees, each of their nominees ends up with 0.2 points; and so on. For any nominee which appears on any of the lists, there are two numbers: First, there’s the aggregate sum of all the point-values for that nominee. Second, there’s the total number of nominations for that nominee. Focus on the two nominees with the lowest point-totals; those nominees are candidates for elimination. Whichever of those two nominees has the lowest number of nominations, that nominee is the one that gets eliminated.
For those of you who find that explanation to be uninformative, there’s an EPH PowerPoint and PDF which contain a worked example of EPH in action.
Oh, very interesting. No requirement for formal lists, no requirement for voters to know in advance who all the candidates are, simple ballot papers and even reasonably practical to verify results by hand. I like it. A couple of weaknesses I can see that might mean it’s not suitable elsewhere, but neither seem to be relevant here.
It’s not completely proportional – 50%+1 is sufficient to win all places when in a PR system it would only be sufficient to win 50% of the places – but given that it’s just for shortlisting for a single place election that doesn’t matter here: 50%+1 is sufficient to win the second round anyway. Wouldn’t work in a highly factionalised environment and a single round ballot, but in one of those you should just use a list system anyway.
It also has the common problem of non-preferential systems that a vote for a moderately good candidate can harm a great candidate. Say there are five people who think A is great, and ten who think B is great and A is also good but not as good as B – if the “B is great” people also nominate A, then A wins, whereas if they only nominate B, then B wins. So there’s perhaps some scope for a “semi-slate” to get one work on the ballot by recommending people only nominate that, when they wouldn’t ordinarily have the numbers to get one work on. (But again, with it being a two round election, that doesn’t really matter)
cim @40:
That’s by design:
My first Hugo vote ever. I am, well, satisfied with the results. I made myself read all the fiction nominees. That was not fun.
@cim 38/40:
STV should work fine if you allow (a) equal rankings, and (b) if voters only express short preference lists. On (a) but you should be able just give it a similar treatment to the system here, i.e. if at any stage of the count your ballot is at the stage with two equal rankings, you just count that as two ballots with half value. And, (b), the Single *Nontransferable* Vote (where everyone gets just one vote) is semi-proportional enough to, frankly, work here). So you could easily just say, up to 5 preferences, thus avoiding huge preference lists.
So combining these two points: a perfectly fair system would be to allow people to vote for 5 candidates — just as now — and count the votes under an STV counting system such as Meek, adjusted to allow for tied rankings. You could switch to the differing elimination method of the system we’re discussing here if you wanted, too, instead of the standard STV system — in that case the only significant difference in practise would be the reallocation of votes that are past the STV quota of 1/6th of all votes.
You could also allow, but not compel, people to rank their 5 choices, which would make the elimination system more straightforward and remove the need for the arbitary elimination method of this system. Or you could simply make them rank their choices 1-5 — that wouldn’t be much of a problem at all, it would make the ballot easy, though I think the idea with not ranking your 5 candidates is that it’s only the nominations, you’re not supposed to choose your #1 yet.
Are you sure about that? I’d take a close look — I don’t think that’s true at all.
But overall, my point about proportional representation is simply that it’s good to see an example of it in action being used to solve problematic elections — the precise details are fine, the system isn’t 100% perfect but it is 1000% better than the naive old system (and it’s far superior to the 4 votes, 6 nominees system which is the alternative — all that does is give slates a slightly higher hurdle to overcome in terms of needing 1.5 times more votes to sweep the full slate, and needing some more coordination so as to make sure there’s no wasted votes).
Hopefully these kinds of events can help show liberals, especially in the USA, who don’t yet understand the issue of proportional representation, the importance of the issue in terms of giving diverse views their deserved representation — whether it be in the US Congress, a city council, or a popular vote for a prestigious sci-fi award.
It’s worth noting that any voting system can be gamed; no voting system is perfect (see also: Arrow’s impossibility theorem). The best you can do is a voting system whose flaws you can live with. And thus far, it sure seems as if EPH’s flaws are sufficiently minor/irrelevant that the Hugo Awards can live with said flaws.
I’m late to the party because holidays happen, but I’m really happy for Julie Dillon whose wonderful work I’ve been supporting for the last years
What Arrow proved in that theorem is that certain properties of a voting system, that (most) people would agree would be desirable (or perhaps non-negotiably necessary) in a democratic voting system, cannot all be achieved simultaneously; if one or more of those properties is sacrificed, then a voting system that has the remaining properties is possible.
For instance, one of the properties is that there exists no voter D such that the outcome of the vote depends only on D’s ballot choice. Such a voter is what we call a “dictator”, and there certainly have been such voting systems in practice. As Walt Kelly put it (someplace in his series of Pogo strips about the Jack Acid Society), that’s a one-man, one-vote system: D (in his case, Wiley Catt, who carries a shotgun, and who’s drawn to look a lot like Joe McCarthy) is the one man, and he has the one vote!