The 2015 Hugo Awards: Thoughts on the Nominees

If you've been hanging out on (certain parts of) twitter in the last two weeks, you probably had a sense of what was coming in this year's Hugo nominations.  The rumor storm has been brewing furiously, and yet even those dark hints were not quite enough to prepare us for just how dismal this year's nominees would be.  The organized right-wing voting campaign that last year gave us Vox Day, Hugo nominee, has largely swept this year's nominees, completely sweeping six out of seventeen categories, and dominating a further seven, including best novel and the Campbell award.  There's already been a lot of talk on this issue--this thread at Making Light, begun when the whispers of this year's results began to be deafening, is more than a thousand comments long, and Mike Glyer at File 770 has been furiously collecting responses from the campaign's instigators and supporters.  There will no doubt be more verbiage spilled on this issue in the coming weeks, and maybe nothing I have to say here is particularly new, but here are my thoughts at the moment.

• To begin with, I'd like to discourage people from referring to the bloc-voting campaign with the moniker Sad Puppies.  Larry Correia chose that name when he started encouraging his fans to "take back" the Hugos three years ago, and Brad Torgesen adopted it for his suggested slate of nominees when he took over the project this year.  In the latter case, there seems to have been a deliberate attempt to distance the Sad Puppies from the toxicity of bigots like Vox Day (who was not on Torgesen's ballot) and to present a kinder, gentler face of right-wing bloc-voting.  Day's response to this was to post his own suggested slate, the Rabid Puppies ballot, including himself in several categories.  As this analysis by Mike Glyer shows, it was Day's choices that prevailed, with almost all Puppy nominees appearing on both ballots or on Day's alone.  Our current slate of Hugo nominees are not a Sad Puppy ballot; they're a Vox Day ballot.  They represent the views of a racist, misogynistic, homophobic troll, whose supporters solicited the help of GamerGate to achieve their goals.  Using Sad Puppies as a blanket term allows the people who helped make this happen pretend that it comes down to nothing more than a political disagreement between equally valid stances (as Torgesen has been doing in the Making Light thread) instead of what it actually is, a hate campaign.
  
  
• Having said that, it is equally important to say (and a lot of people have already said it) that the Sad and Rabid Puppies' tactics are as legitimate as their politics, whininess, sense of entitlement, and general contempt for the award they claim to crave are risible.  I don't say this out of some noble desire to fight to the death for the rights of those I disagree with (because seriously, fuck them), but because I would really like it if this year's nominations actually spurred a meaningful discussion of how the Hugos work and how we want them to work.  Already there are multiple suggestions for introducing safeguards into the system that would (it is argued) help alleviate the influence of any single determined voting bloc.  On the other hand you have people arguing that we wouldn't be seeing this result if online campaigning of any sort--including things like my recommendation posts--had not become normalized in the last decade (I have a history of being sympathetic to that stance, but I think the ship has sailed on returning to those norms, even if we had any reason to believe that the people who voted with Vox Day would feel any need to respect them).  And on the third hand, there are those pointing out, with some justification, that any democratic system is vulnerable to those who care more about winning than about the system's well-being, and that this is simply the cost of doing business.  Since the Hugos are essentially a write-off this year (I've said several times that I'd be perfectly happy to skip the awards in favor of getting the nominating breakdowns right now instead of in August), I think we have a golden opportunity to really talk about this award and what we hope to get from it, and perhaps even come up with ways to make it better.
  
  
• So what to do about these nominees?  Historically, the Hugos have tended to be extremely vulnerable to manipulation in the nominating phase, but extremely resilient in the voting phase.  You could usually count on the larger Hugo-voting membership, even those who aren't clued into every nuance of campaigning and strategizing, to be able to tell the astroturf nominees from the ones genuinely deserving of consideration.  This year, for obvious reasons, I don't think we can rely on that effect, which leads to the obvious question: what are people who are disgusted with this turn of events to do?  The way I see it, there are three options.
  
  
  1. Proceed as normal: read the voter packet, learn about the nominees, and vote according to their literary merits.  I can see the appeal of this approach--proceeding with dignity in the face of undignified behavior--but I have to say that, aside from any other considerations, it strike me as masochistic.  I mean seriously, three John C. Wright novellas?  Who could possibly be expected to put themselves through that?  More importantly, I don't see the merit in pretending not to smell the turd that the various puppies have left on our floor--certainly no one involved with this campaign is going to be chastened by our doing so.
     
     
  2. Write this year off: forget about the Hugos, enjoy the Worldcon if you're going, and try again next year.  Again, I can see the appeal--as someone who loves the award, I was hoping to vote on this year's ballot out of love and enthusiasm, not beleaguered resentment.  Those $40 would have been a lot easier to spend in the former case.  But taking this approach means leaving the Hugos to those who want to destroy them (or, in the best case, those who are blissfully unaware of this fracas and may hand Vox Day and his ilk a Hugo simply because they've chosen the best of a raft of bad options).  Especially given how likely it is that the puppy campaigns and their GamerGate supporters will try to influence the winners as they did the nominees, I don't think we have the right to cede the field.
     
     
  3. No Award: place every Sad/Rabid Puppy nominee under No Award, even if it means choosing it as your first choice.  (Deirdre Saoirse Moen has a handy guide for how to do this.)  To be clear, trying to achieve this result will take some doing.  It will mean not only voting that way yourself, but publicizing the fact that you've done so and why.  No Award has only won a category once in the Hugo's history.  To achieve that result six times in a single year will be no small matter.
  
  
• Having read the above, it probably won't surprise you that I've chosen door number three (except for the Best Dramatic Presentation categories, where I honestly don't see the point).  When I stated this on twitter last night I got the predictable whining about how I was being unfair and not judging works according to their quality.  I think that my response at the time probably says all that needs to be said on this issue:
  

  So I'm getting some whiners complaining that no awarding all rabid puppies is "unfair" because it doesn't consider the quality of the work.
  — Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) April 4, 2015

  
  

  To which I have a few responses. First: ahahahahahahahahaha. Grow the fuck up.
  — Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) April 4, 2015

  
  

  Second: stop talking about merit. If your people were capable of winning Hugos on merit, they'd already have Hugos.
  — Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) April 4, 2015

  
  

  Third: life is short and my time is precious. I don't have to read anything I don't want to read.
  — Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) April 4, 2015

  
  

  I feel no obligation to read works selected by people who, aside from everything else, have a proven history of terribly taste in literature
  — Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) April 4, 2015

  
  

  Fourth: if you choose to associate with bigots and hate groups, you will be treated accordingly. That's how adult life works.
  — Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) April 4, 2015

  
  

  Fifth and last: the sad/rabid puppy ballots demonstrate a profound contempt for the Hugo award and its voters.
  — Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) April 4, 2015

  
  

  Why in god's name would anyone do that, and then expect the award's voters to treat them with respect in return?
  — Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) April 4, 2015

  
  
• Some people have been making the point that people who were on the Sad and Rabid Puppy ballots may not have been informed of that fact, and their permission not solicited.  Despite Torgesen's claims to the contrary, this does appear to be the case.  Some nominees, having been informed of how they got their nominations, declined to accept them.  Others, obviously, did not.  Some are only now realizing what the score is.  I feel sorry for nominees who were overjoyed to receive what they thought was genuine recognition only to realize that they've been embroiled in a political fight not of their making.  I feel less sorry for those whose response to that situation has been to pretend that they are not being used as a shield by bigots and hate groups.  Nevertheless, I stand by my decision that all Puppy selections, willing or unwilling, should go below No Award.  It's the only way to register my disgust at this behavior, and, if it causes people to be extra-cautious about associating themselves with Vox Day and his ilk next year, then all the better.
  
  
• One extra point in favor of becoming a supporting member of Sasquan in spite of the horrible Hugo ballot: supporting members are eligible to vote for site selection, even if they aren't on-site for the convention.  This year the convention will be voting on the location of the 2017 Worlcon, and if, like myself, you're very eager to see the Helsinki bid win, it might be worth your money just for that.  There are more details about how to vote here, and the exact process will be clearer once Sasquan opens the site selection ballot.
  
  
• And speaking of next year, what of it, and the future of the Hugos in general?  I've been seeing a lot of people assuming that the Rabid Puppies' success will result in a counter-slate by their ideological opponents, and that the Hugos will devolve into pure bloc voting.  What I haven't seen is anyone standing up to produce such a slate, and I don't think that I will.  People who vote out of a genuine love for the award and the field will inevitably be a lot harder to corral than those who vote out of hate and resentment.  I think that next year those of us who care about the Hugos will do exactly what we did last year--produce dozens of lists of interesting, diverse work for people to consider and hopefully nominate.  But what does that mean for the future of the award?  The way I see it, only two things can happen: either Vox Day and GamerGate stop what they're doing and let the Hugos go back to being what they were, or the award will die.  Once again, the Hugo-voting Worldcon membership is neither passive nor stupid.  They will notice if the award becomes the fiefdom of a bunch of politically-motivated bloc voters, and they will stop taking it seriously.  This is what happened to the Nebula award ten years ago: once it became clear that the award's shortlist had no bearing on anything except who was better at logrolling, the award quickly became a joke.  The SFWA had to work hard to rehabilitate it, and it still doesn't have anywhere near the cachet it did in the early 00s.  I don't say this because I have a solution, or because I believe a hate group like GamerGate cares that the only possible outcome of its actions will be to burn the Hugos down, but because I honestly don't see another possible outcome.
  
  
• That said, it is worth remembering that the Hugos aren't the only award out there.  Alongside their nominations, yesterday also saw the announcement of the winners of the James Tiptree Jr. Award and the Philip K. Dick Award, both of which delivered interesting winners and honors lists.  We should be seeing the Clarke shortlist soon enough, and the list of submitted novels certainly suggests some intriguing possibilities.  I have my (loudly-stated) problems with the Locus Award, but if you're looking for an alternative to the Hugos that is still a popular vote award, you could certainly do worse.  2014 was a fantastic year for genre writing.  It's a shame that the Hugos aren't going to acknowledge that, but that doesn't meant no one else has.
  
  
• Some interesting links on this issue: I like Nicholas Whyte and Andrew Hickey's takes on the situation.  Jason Sanford looks at how well the nominated novels have sold to see if the Puppy selections truly represent the "real" genre (spoiler: they do not).  Stats-maven Niall Harrison has got an analysis of the number of votes needed to get on each of the ballots this year and last, which suggests some interesting conclusions.
  
  
• I will have some more to say about the Best Fan Writer ballot later in the week.