So, this guy decided to “attack” the Sad Puppies by admitting everything we’ve been saying is true. I commented there, but figured I’d save it here, too:
1: When in the world did the Hugo Award become a “literary award”? Have you even heard of Hugo Gernsback, let alone read anything he wrote?
2: I feel very sad for you, that you can’t tell the difference between “story first, message second”, and “can’t have a message”. You really can’t tell the difference between entertainment and propaganda?
3: This one you at least got right. That’s right, we don’t think that the Hugos should be dominated by a left wing clique. So good of you to admit that that is what our opponents want.
He replied, and I replied. His system ate my reply, so I’ll put it here:
When we vote for the Hugo for best novel we are making a literary evaluation.
Only if you suffer from literary status envy. As for the rest of us, we vote on “best story.” For which “literary” is somewhere between orthogonal, and negatively correlated.
We hardly notice messages that we agree with.
No, you, as someone who wants propaganda, not stories, only notice messages you disagree with. The rest of us don’t want to read Piers Plowman, no matter how much we agree with the message.
You misunderstand me if you think I suggested that the Hugos should be dominated by what you call “a left wing clique.”
They don’t think science fiction should contain messages, or be socially progressive…. The social issues I was referring to are diversity, gender issues, and a focus on under represented cultures and perspectives.
The above is complete proof that your previous sentence is garbage. You think the Hugos are incomplete without a number of stories pushing the left wing BS you mention above. And you most certainly do not think the Hugos are incomplete if they don’t have stories pushing similar right wing themes.
The Puppies don’t want to be troubled by other viewpoints. They’ve proven this with their slate voting tactic, locking other viewpoints out of several categories of the Hugo ballot.
Authors the Puppies nominated range from a bisexual socialist, to “Genghis” Kratman. If that’s all “right wing” to you, you are the one with a serious problem.
OTOH, if what you’re complaining about is that we didn’t nominate any crappy “message fiction” written by some pathetic hack who’s sold his or her birthright for a pot of message, then we’ll happily plead guilty.
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