Nothing New on the Internet

It’s often noted that “there is nothing new under the sun,” which does not stop anyone from trying. Example: Noted SF gadfly Vox Day has announced an new rival to Wikipedia, called Infogalactic, “ an Internet-based, free-content encyclopedia project that is a dynamic fork of Wikipedia and improves upon the online encyclopedia’s model of openly editable content. Infogalactic’s pages … and are categorized in a variety of ways, including Relativity, Notability, and Reliability to allow the user to prioritize his personalized perspective.” In other words, if crowdsourcing your facts wasn’t good enough, now you can crowdsource your facts to suit you. It’s like watching Fox News or MSNBC if they gave up trying to look objective.

There are, of course, a few issues with this: The most obvious is that you’re going from living in a bubble to living inside an Internet force field. (If you weren’t living in a bubble already, this wouldn’t interest you.) I’m not sure what good it is to have the most extensive information tool ever invented if you’re going to limit it to stuff you already think you know.

But my problem with this is different; it’s really a matter of semantics. This is not a “free-content encyclopedia.” Nor is it some new kind of information provider–it is no kind of information provider at all. No, this is something very different, and (far from being groundbreaking) it is very old. The name of this well-used trope is…

…fiction.

Mr. Day is crowd-sourcing what may be the world’s largest novel. Or, I guess, an anthology. Perhaps it is a “three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality.” Regardless, when you create a world to your own taste, and you invite other people to come in to see if they like the milieu you have created, that’s called “fiction.” And given that it will probably include alternate history, it is not out of line to call it “science fiction.”

I wonder, will it be eligible for a Hugo next year?

#SFWApro

 

 

Read Full Post »

Hugo Report 2016

It is a comment upon current circumstances when I say that my limited participation in Hugo voting this year honestly does not proscribe my ability to air my feelings on the proceedings. In full disclosure, I only voted in one category because I lacked the time to survey the field in more depth, and in fact, I gave that one No Award. Oddly enough, it was not one of the categories pre-empted by Puppies of any stripe.

Nevertheless, the entire process is worthy of discussion. As was the case last year, the various Puppies tried to game the system, but this year voters were onto them and they had markedly less presence on the final ballot. Needless to say, that they had any effect at all disproportionate to their numbers was unfortunate. Not only does the presence of any kind of slate demean the voting, but it actively bars others’ choices from appearing. You can proclaim your candidates’ merits all you like, but if you have to resort to underhanded methods to gain their nomination (even if it isn’t technically cheating), then you forfeit the opportunity to persuade anyone to agree with you because you have eliminated free choice. In the end, you are limiting these works’ acceptance (and sales) because no one wants anything that’s being forced down their throats. Ask any child with a cold.

Now Mr. Beale, who’s behind all of this, would have you believe that “everything is going according to plan”–just like every supervillain cackles two seconds before Captain Justice bursts through the skylight and brings his little foray into world domination to a halt. As will happen here. Voting slates will never be completely erased, but their influence will wane to the point where no one will want to pay for a Worldcon membership simply in order to exercise what little destructive power they have left.

The question, of course, is why do this at all? What do they get from wantonly disrupting someone else’s fun? I have no answer, unless it’s because they lack the imagination to make up their own.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. This, too, will pass. Whether the Hugos themselves matter, that’s another discussion–one that perhaps we will have when the current crisis abates. I look forward to it.

 

Read Full Post »

Why the Hugo Fight is Like the Election

Warning: This concerns the recurring fiasco of who/what/how/why we vote for the Hugo Awards. (At this point I’m not even sure exactly why people are fighting over it.) If you don’t care about the Hugos, then (a) good for you, and (b) see you next time. But if you do care, or if you are honestly confused, then perhaps the following will prove of some benefit.

Five Reasons Why the Hugo Kerfuffle is Like the Presidential Election.

1) It’s come down to people calling each other names. (Okay, the Hugo fight started that way.) Hugo partisans have called each other neo-Nazis, Social Justice Warriors, homophobes, liberals, and other terms I won’t repeat here. Even spouses have come in for insult (on both sides). In the election debates, people call each other neo-Nazis, closet liberals, RINOs, and small-handed. Even spouses have come in for insult (on both sides).

2) The Hugos are haunted by the specter of an outsider who has expressed his desire to burn the entire program to the ground. The election is haunted by the specter of at least one candidate who threatens by his very presence to burn his party’s entire program to the ground.

3) The Sad Puppies brag that they brought thousands of new voters to the Hugos last year. Donald Trump brags that he has brought millions of new voters to his party. Whether either of their successes proves long-term remains to be seen.

4) Last year, the “No Award” avalanche lead to threats that many will boycott the awards this year. This year, the idea that certain candidates may not receive their parties’ respective nominations have lead to threats that voters will boycott the general election.

5) The Hugo controversy has pitted fandom against itself, creating fissures and scars that may require decades to heal, if ever. The election controversy is splitting the American public against itself, revealing fissures and scars that have not healed in centuries, and may never do so.

6) Bonus! Both the Hugo controversy and the election are being conducted in the most childish, self-destructive, and futile manner possible. People screaming epithets at each other has never solved an issue. It only leads to violence, which leads to more violence, which leads to five years of bloodshed from Fort Sumter to Appomattox.

I have a solution. It’s very simple: Calm down. Use your indoor voices. Behave like adults. Set an example for your children that your parents would be proud of.

Because if you don’t, I’m going to have to start sending people to bed without supper. And nobody wants that.

Read Full Post »

As Strange as Fiction

It’s often said that “Life imitates art.” But as I posited in my last post, that doesn’t normally happen in SF. And yet, here we are: We have a presidential campaign that imitates a Hugo campaign.

I’m speaking, of course, of the Donald Trump campaign v. the Rabid Puppies.* Lately (and not-so-lately) it has become the fashion in certain quarters to wonder if the Donald is trying to lose the nomination.** I mean, the things he says…about women, immigrants, war heroes… Is there a non-white male group he hasn’t tried to alienate?

And then there are the Rabid Puppies. Now these guys I’m sure are in it for the laughs. It’s another example of someone trying to tick everyone else off, and I can’t see that it’s serious. It’s just a way to “stick it to the Man” (assuming in this case there is a “Man”) and see how much fun can be had. It’s “Bart Simpson Goes to Worldcon.”

The surprising thing in both instances is how well it’s worked. Last year the RPs pretty much swept the Hugo nominations, to everyone’s surprise, which lead to a conclusion that no one is proud of. This year Trump has lead the Republican field for months, and if he gets the nomination, I don’t think the results will make a lot of people happy.

But maybe this is all to the good. Systems that lie in place unchallenged for too long become complacent; people adjust to the status quo, never noticing that maintaining the status quo, over the long term, is called “stagnation.” So once in a while you have to stir things up. People don’t like it when their comfortable status quo is stirred up, particularly those who have made it to the top of the heap. (This doesn’t mean that the stirrers are necessarily right, merely necessary.)

Is it painful? Yes. Is it scary? Yes. Is it necessary? Unfortunately, yes. And even more than that, it’s inevitable. But the result is that people realize that the system does not operate on auto-pilot, that it needs attention, just like in all those stories about generation starships that encounter problems a hundred years later and somebody has to exceed himself to fix them. We haven’t reached that point; we only have to rouse ourselves a little bit, pay a little attention, and a new, perhaps better, status quo can be achieved. It may not be quite the same, but that’s how the system works.

 

*Last year, I could have included the Sad Puppies, but they claim to have reframed their narrative and I have no reason to doubt them.

**This is not an invitation to discuss political issues. Thank you.

Read Full Post »

Drawing a Line in the Sand

If you’ve had a lot of time on your hands lately, you may have been following the Tor boycott, originated by the Sad Puppies, who once said boycotts were bad, but now apparently they’re okay if undertaken for the right reason, i.e., a reason one supports. (I bought a Tor book a few days ago by an author I’d never heard of just because it was a Tor book.) The oddest thing, perhaps, about the Tor boycott is that at least one of the SPs is a Tor writer who goes to great lengths to say he’s “not supporting the boycott” in a way that shows he totally is, except he doesn’t want to hurt his own bottom line. Which is fine, everyone gets that, but you really ought just to admit it and shut up.

Still, it reminds me of the famous uproar over Orson Scott Card and his Ender’s Game movie. I don’t agree with OSC about gay rights, but I sold a story to him that he published last year. Because hey, money is money, and as long as his magazine doesn’t reflect views I find abhorrent, I’ve got no problem with us making money together. It’s not the first time I was published by right-wingers. I’m an equal opportunity writer: I’ve been published by pagans, too. I’m not going to go out and give every editor and publisher a litmus test. I’d run out of markets.

On the other hand, there was a furor a few years ago about a story in Weird Tales that people complained was racist. I read some of it; it was pretty insensitive, to say the least, but it was also awfully written. I had a sub in at WT at the time, but I eventually withdrew it because I didn’t want to be linked with a magazine that would publish that particular story. Because of the content or the craft? Both, really. But that time it was the magazine that offended me, not the publisher.

I’m seeing, though, that other people (unsurprisingly) have different views. I’ve seen writers admit they won’t sub to certain markets because of the political views of the publishers/editors. This is their right, of course, and I respect their integrity. But I’m also secretly glad that there’s less competition. Because I don’t discriminate on account of who’s behind the curtain.

Oh, wait, yes I do. The leader of the Rabid Puppies, Theodore Beale, runs a publishing house. I’ve not read any of his offerings, but I’m going to, because several are up for Hugos. I’m told they’re awful, but I’ll make that call myself. Regardless, I will never sub anything to that publisher–even if it would make me look good by comparison with their other titles–because I find the publisher’s views ugly and repellent–so much so that if you want to see his blog (which I don’t recommend), you’ll have to find it yourself. I will not link to it. Nor would I want my fiction affiliated with him in any fashion. (I have a suspicion the stories he sells reflect his views, but I don’t know yet.)

So there are places I won’t go to make a sale. Everybody’s line in the sand is different. But at the same time, when does someone become so anathema that you won’t do business with him? Does that ever change? Maybe that’s why lines are drawn in the sand; every once in a while you can wipe them out and draw new ones.

#SFWApro

Read Full Post »

With Apologies to Don McLean

It was not so long ago
I can still remember how the writing used to make me smile
And I knew if I only wrote
That I could make those people vote
And maybe I’d have a Hugo in a while.

But those Sad Puppies made me quiver
With every posting they’d deliver
Bad news on my laptop
I couldn’t make them all stop.

I can’t discern just what they hate
When they talk about their awards slate
But something touched me deep inside
The day the Hugos—died.

So bye-bye to American sci-fi
Tried complaining to the concom
But the concom was fried,
And them good ol’ boys was drinkin’ bottled Chimay
Singin’ “This is all the fault of Vox Day,
This is all the fault of Vox Day.”

And the three pros I admire most
Writing about aliens, ghouls, and ghosts
They had to admit Worldcon was toast
The day the Hugos died.

And they were singin’
Bye-bye to American sci-fi
Tried complaining to the concom
But the concom was fried,
And them good ol’ boys was drinkin’ bottled Chimay
Singin’ “This is all the fault of Vox Day,
This is all the fault of Vox Day.”

Bye-bye to American sci-fi
Tried complaining to the concom
But the concom was fried,
And them good ol’ boys was drinkin’ bottled Chimay
Singin’ “This is all the fault of Vox Day.”

Read Full Post »