The Pups of Wrath Yield Bitter Whine

So the Sad Puppies apparently shared their short list recently. I hear they include some surprising picks. I hear this mostly from the people who have been dismayed to find themselves on it.

There are three possibilities here, and human beings being complex, self-contradictory people, I suspect that all three of them are true, and that the people behind this list would claim (and probably have claimed) all three reasons at varying times, and meant them, depending on how they feel and who’s asking.

The possible reasons are:

1. There is some sincerity behind their claims to be apolitical and non-partisan.
2. They hope the presence of people they deem “SJWs” whose success they put down to “affirmative action” on the list will serve as a poison pill for those books/authors, resulting in those people withdrawing from consideration and/or “SJWs” refusing to vote for them and allowing them a clearer field.
3. Failing that, they hope that if the authors don’t withdraw and those books aren’t affected by a backlash, then they can prevent the appearance of the same shut-out at the ballot box that so bruised their little clique last year.

2 and 3 in particular, taken together, form what we might call a “Beale Gambit”, i.e., a situation in which one forms a diabolical, cunning, and intricate plan to announce one’s own victory no matter what actually happens in reality. (For bonus points, you can announce you’re going to do this in advance.)

So, if the Sad Puppies have a plan to claim victory no matter what happens, the question is, how do we beat them?

And the answer is: we don’t. We shouldn’t. No one’s goal should ever be to “beat” these truly sad individuals at anything, no more than our goal should be to shut them up or shut them out of the process.

The Sad Puppies are at war with both the future and past of science fiction and fantasy, but no one is (or no one should be) at war with the Sad Puppies. Our goal should be to make speculative fiction welcoming and inclusive in spite of them, not to shut them out of it in the hopes that this will make things welcoming and inclusive. Our goal should be to get more people involved and keep them engaged so as to dilute the ability of small cliques of bigots motivated to become the tastemakers and kingmakers to game the system.

The correct course of action to take on the Puppy list is to ignore it. If they’re going to claim victory no matter what happens (and the fact that they claimed victory in 2015 should be enough to convince anyone that they will), then there’s really nothing more for anyone to do except get out and nominate now, and get out and vote later. Don’t let the existence of their list or its contents sway you one way or another.

And if you found yourself on their list? Well, they’re just a pack of dogs howling at the moon. This is not a situation that requires the moon to answer.

Ignoring the Puppies’ list is the correct thing to do.

First, to the extent that they are sincere in their claims and their efforts, this rewards their sincerity. If they nominated some people who actually do win on merit, let them win on merit.

Second, 2015 gave us a realistic idea of the Sad Puppies’ strength: not much, not enough to actually stuff the ballot box when fandom is on guard against them.

Third, it’s just taking what the Puppies want us to do to its logical conclusion.

They want us to ignore the history of their movement. They want us to ignore that it all started as a petulant trophy-grab by their esteemed founder. They want us to ignore the hand Vox Day had in shaping and supporting the movement. They want us to ignore the fact that Brad Torgersen explicitly laid out in his blog how his goal was to stop the “wrong people” from winning and to return science fiction to a more homogeneous idealized yesteryear where you could literally judge a book by its cover. They want us to ignore the racism and sexism and homophobia. They want us to ignore the goal-post shifting by their principals, the spin that permeates their blog posts, the lies and slander they heap upon their critics, the threats they level against their opposition. They want us to ignore the stated reasons they gave before for their crusade, each time they try to reshape the narrative to their benefit.

Well, let’s make things easy on them and easy on us, and just not ignore everything.

Just ignore the whole lot of them… not to the point of pretending they don’t exist, of course. Remember them only as a reminder as to what can happen to an institution when apathy creeps in. Remember them as a reason to participate in the Hugo process and to encourage others to participate.

Don’t give them your time, don’t give them your attention, don’t give them your energy.

We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits.
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry, thirsty roots?

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

Some quick updates.

I am writing Tales of MU. It’s going well enough that if not for the x-factor relating to jury duty (I am effectively “on call” until mid-April), I’d probably be posting already, or announcing a date.

I’m also working on other long-delayed things; though with the same caveats. Once my term of service as a juror is up, I’ll probably make an extensive blog about my experiences. I do have to say that my local court system does what it can to keep things as convenient as possible under the circumstances, though, there are practical limits to how convenient it can be.

My decision to hold off on publishing more of my D&D material for a month to see what happens has yielded the following results:

• First, assuming the trends hold for the next two weeks, I’m on track to make only a little less money this month than I did last month.
• Second, it’s a lot easier for me to keep to my “release a thing a week” plan when I’m not arbitrarily restricting which arenas in which I’m doing it. This is the third week of the month and the third week in a row in which I’m not putting something out for sale at the end of it. Again, jury duty and its caprices is a factor here.

I enjoy discussing D&D rules, answering questions, and giving advice, but I get fed up with the brocentric and mansplainy attitudes that permeate most spaces where people are talking about this subject. Accordingly, I have started a side blog at http://dungeons-demystified.tumblr.com where anyone playing 5E or looking to play 5E can ask questions or advice, and where I’ll share some general tips/basic definitions.

Why a side blog when I already talk about D&D here? Because semi-weekly Spherical Goblins posts are one things, but basically leavening my main blog with a D&D FAQ would either make the blog unusable as a general blog or the FAQ unusable as a FAQ.

I’m devoting today to getting one particular thing done, with an eye towards making an announcement about it at day’s end. That’s all I’ll say on the subject unless and until I’m ready to make that announcement.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

NO FOOLING! Angels of the Meanwhile comes out April 1st!

UPDATE: IT’S APRIL 1ST, AND IT’S OUT!

Check your email if you pre-ordered, check your spam folder if it’s not there, and if you did not get in on the fun, check out this link.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Well, folks, it’s been a long journey from there to here, but just over a year on, we are ready to send out the absolutely amazing e-anthology put together to help genre poet and lawyer Elizabeth R. McClellan in her time of need. Angels of the Meanwhile has an official release date, and it’s one of immense personal significance to her and her spiritual community down there in Tennessee: April 1st.

That’s right. On April 1st, we’re going to be sending out a zip file with this collection of prose and poems, many brand-new or otherwise unavailable, to everyone who has pitched in to help her out since we first sent out the distress call last spring.

And if you want to get in on this outpouring of love or you just want some shiny pretty words tied up in a neat package, you can do that by clicking this link and making your contribution. (Recommended amount: $10).

Since the car accident that started all this, Elizabeth has dealt with a considerable amount of pain and uncertainty. She has medical debt to pay off, she’s exhausted her sick leave, she’s had to deal with a broken ankle, and she’s not done recovering from her current shoulder surgery. Things are stretched so thin, she has an immediate need for $250 to keep her car insurance that she needs to keep her car that she needs to keep her job, and she needs that in a week, before March 26th.

 

 

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The table of contents for the book has some changes, due to evolving rights issues, but all of the contributors are still there:

 

Table of Contents

Bits of Prose (Flash Fiction, Prose Poems)

• This Is The Place Where Lost Things Go – Kythrynne Aisling
• The Merry Knives of Interspecies Communication – Bogi Takács
• Upon The Land, On The Sea – Sonya Taaffe
• Foam – Dusti Morton
• The Sweat of their Brows – Alexandra Erin
• The Dirty Fairy – Deborah Walker
• Beauty Sleeping – Ellen Kushner

Verse

• Beastwoman’s Snarled Rune – Rose Lemberg
• Pain Shared Is Catching (For April Grant) – Erik Amundsen
• Gorgon Girls – Saira Ali
• This Is What It’s All About – Lupa
• Blodeuwedd – Amal El-Mohtar
• Burning Wings (For C.S.E. Cooney) – Jennifer Crow
• The Changeling Always Wins – Nicole Kornher-Stace
• The Witch’s Girl – Alexandra Erin
• The First Wife – Lev Mirov
• The Secret of Being a Cowboy – Catherynne M. Valente
• Firstborn – Christina Sng
• Children of the Faun and Fae – Merideth Allyn
• Ivan Icarus – by C.S.E. Cooney
• The Freeman’s Dance – Jack Ralls
• We Named Our Grief Irene – Virginia M. Mohlere
• Fucking Doughnuts – Legoule
• Allison Gross Speaks of the Worm – Gwynne Garfinkle
• Sand Bags – Dominik Parisien
• Hot Wet Mess – S.J. Tucker
• Getting Winterized: A Guide to Rural Living – Elizabeth R. McClellan
• Uncommon Law – Lisa Bradley
• These Are Days – Roni Neal
• lis pendens – Mike Allen
• Thread Between Stone – Bryan Thao Worra

Prose Stories

• The View of My Brother’s Profile In The Rear-View Mirror – Randee Dawn
• Inside, Looking Out – Alexandra Erin
• Changed – Nicolette Barischoff
• Fire Flight – A.M. Burns
• The Legacy Box – Satyros Phil Brucato
• Illusions of Safety – Angelia Sparrow

 

(Yep, I’m in there three times. Well, I couldn’t ask anyone to do something for Pope Lizbet I wouldn’t do myself, could I?)

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.