Monday News: The Hugos, weekly SFF serials, the wisdom of groups, and women’s book clubs
Publishing Newsbook clubs / dating / female sexuality / Hugo Awards / literary awards / politics / research / Serials / SFF14 Comments
Who Won Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards, and Why It Matters – The Hugos are over and the Puppies did not take one award. This article from Wired does a great job of explaining the backstory of the Sad and Rabid Puppies campaign (I absolutely believe they are functionally one campaign, and will refer to them that way), and it does a particularly good job of demonstrating that despite the Puppies’ insistence that they wanted to de-politicize the awards, their language is — incessantly and overtly – political when discussing the Hugos. It reminds me of a tweet I saw from a Puppy supporter who referred to the campaign as about ‘books with another opinion.’ Except that books don’t have an “opinion,” so was it really about what books should be winning or who should be winning. Annie Bellet, who turned down her very first Hugo nomination because she was nominated as part of the Puppy slate, explains the layers of irony well:
Blonde-haired, fair-skinned, and “covered in tattoos,” Bellet is from Portland, Oregon. “I’m adopted, and I have a sister who is black, a sister who’s Vietnamese. My mom is a lesbian. I grew up in a liberal, inclusive environment. Still, I broke a lot of noses [after hearing] the N-word growing up, trying to defend my little sister. So I do not understand this white persecution narrative.”
Bellet said she thinks Beale “rode” Correia and Torgersen “like ponies. I told Brad that. He said, ‘Just because we’re on the freeway in different cars heading the same direction doesn’t mean we’re together.’ I said, ‘Dude, you’re in the same car, and Vox Day is driving.’ He doesn’t get it. It makes me so sad.”
What’s more, for the record, she doesn’t think Beale, who folded much of the Sad Puppies slate into his own, even read her story. “I’m everything Vox Day doesn’t like—which I consider a badge of honor,” she told me. “I’m a queer female writing about shape-shifters—that fantasy ‘crap’ that’s not ‘real’ science fiction.” Here’s the thing she thinks Beale doesn’t grasp, she said: “Nerd culture brings everybody together. People don’t care what you look like. If you want to be a black Khaleesi, go for it!” –Wired
Meet Serial Box, a New Publisher Serving Up Written Stories Like They Were Television Episodes -Speaking of SFF, here’s a new gimmick for you – I mean “concept:” Serial Box, which seems pretty much like a book packaging business aimed at replicating the weekly television episode but in book form. Its first series, Bookburners, is described as “urban fantasy adventure following a black-ops anti-magic squad backed by the Vatican.” So Dan Brown meets Harry Potter? And at what point will these attempts to simulate other entertainment experiences actually become other entertainment experiences?
Serial Box aims to bring book lovers everything they like about television:
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New episodes each week
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Series are produced by a team of writers collaborating to create the most exciting, dynamic stories
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Episodes are easily ingestible with a 40-minute average read-time
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Each episode is an exciting adventure but together they build into a complete narrative-just like your favorite shows –SF Signal
Groups of People Spot Lies More Often Than Individuals Do – When I ran across this summary in Scientific American of a recent study suggesting that groups have a better chance at identifying a liar than individuals, I thought it might have applicability for group discussions about books, too – particularly that groups of people have a better chance of gaining insight into texts when they have the opportunity to exchange ideas, listen to different views, and learn new things. The study itself is interesting, because researchers found that if an individual made up his or her mind before entering the group, the group’s effectiveness is diminished, but that people entering a group with an open mind do a better job collectively at identifying the person not telling the truth. The implications for juries are obvious, but there are also many questions that are not answered in the research. I am quoting from the actual study below:
This group advantage in lie detection did not come through the statistical aggregation of individual opinions as often shown in existing research (a wisdom-of-crowds effect), but instead through the process of group discussion. Groups were not simply maximizing the small amounts of accuracy contained among individual members but were instead creating a unique type of accuracy altogether. To see the magnitude of this accuracy gain, we identified the most accurate individuals in experiments 1–3 from each session of three participants in the individual condition. Real groups did not perform significantly worse than the best individual in experiments 1–3 (ts < 1.46; Tables 1–3, bottom rows). Of course, these “best individuals” are identified post hoc, benefitting from actual skill but also chance accuracy, therefore providing the highest accuracy rates one could hope to observe. Real groups performed well even against this extremely high bar. Researchers have made a concerted effort to improve individual lie detection, but have not pursued how much individuals could help each other in detecting lies.
Our research therefore leaves many open research questions. What about group discussion, exactly, increases accuracy, particularly in detecting lies compared with individuals? Could group discussion be guided to improve accuracy rates even further? Do larger groups perform even better than smaller groups? Do trained individuals perform even better in a group than untrained individuals? Given the concerted efforts put into training individuals to detect lies more accurately, the productive path for further studying the effectiveness of group lie detection is clear.–Scientific American and PNAS
American women use book club memberships in dating field -It’s really too bad that the stories on this research from the University of Kansas is being promoted on the basis of the dating issue – specifically that in comparing women’s book clubs in Colorado and Ireland, American women tended to use “their status as readers and book club members to increase their popularity in the dating field” – whatever that means. But I think the most interesting potential implications are really in this bit about how women actually think and talk about books in their clubs, and don’t just blindly absorb what they read – imagine that!
She attended 36 book club meeting and interviewed 53 women from ages 19 to 80 as part of the project. Separate from the finding about how women view book clubs and the role of romantic relationships, both American and Irish women utilized reading to develop a sense of self, to foster social and cultural capital and to construct their own sexual identities.
“Conversations at book club meetings served to reinforce women’s sense of self as well as provided a place for women to negotiate their sexuality, particularly through conversations about what kinds of women were being portrayed in books read by the group,” Craig said. –EurekAlert!
I really hope that those who were behind the Sad and Rabid Puppy Slate nonsense don’t do this again next year. Based on the Wired article it sounds like Vox is gearing up to do this again next year.
When did diversity become a bad thing?
@Obsidian Blue- He is gearing up his supporters to vote everything No Award next year.
They consider this a win; they think they proved their point about Hugos not being about best books. It’s weird rhetoric and one you can’t argue since they’d think they won whatever happened. :eyeroll:
2015. will remain a year when flaws in nominations process became more obvious: both events around Hugos and RITA showed us that.
I am glad for Cixin Liu win since it’s first translated novel to win Best Novel, but I am still bummed up magnificent Station 11 or City of Stairs didn’t even make the ballot.
I liked classy move GRRM pulled with his own afterparty award ceremony. :)
“I’m everything Vox Day doesn’t like—which I consider a badge of honor,”
Flies in the face of the argument that sad puppies are racist women haters.
They nominated works based on the art not the artist.
” and it does a particularly good job of demonstrating that despite the Puppies’ insistence that they wanted to de-politicize the awards, their language is — incessantly and overtly – political when discussing the Hugos.”
Yes, they talked about politics. There position is that ideology not art determined who won Hugos. But the puppies didn’t nominate based on ideology. They actually show tolerance and diversity by nominating people whose art they like but whose politics they don’t.
Meanwhile, SJW’s put fear mongering appeals to the racism and bigotries of their own voters and ideology before art. Art isn’t even considered unless the artist passes some leftist litmus test.
And to those who think diversity trumps art. Take a look at the winners. Not much diversity there in comparison to the sad puppies slate.
I think it is great that there are finally writers and their fans who dare speak truth to power about the elitist popular cool kids who want to bully, intimidate, and excommunicate the nerds from society.
“They consider this a win; they think they proved their point about Hugos not being about best books. ”
Yes, because the point was proved that politics trumps art. Rather than just vote for who people thought had the best art, they voted based on ideology, which was the sad puppies complaint in the beginning.
I would like to see their arguments countered with dialog and facts rather than racist smear campaigns. Leftists use accusations of racism far too often to shut down debate rather than deal with the issues on their own merits and it is really disgusting considering the long history of racism and oppression our friends to the left have in our’s and other countries.
And now we see history repeating itself with attacks designed to dehumanize and disenfranchise people who leftists don’t like.
@wodun: Vox Day decided that pretty much every outcome will be a win for him. I read *every* single work in the categories I voted for where I did not, I skipped the categories. Guess what? The categories where I put “No award” on top I did so on the merits – period. But absolutely plenty of people who voted “No award” said that they were doing so in opposition to block slate voting and that was a completely legit position too. They did not like what puppies did – legal but bot ethical. I did not like that too, but I always bend backwards to be fair to the books and I did so in this situation too. Nobody obligated to show any kind of fairness to those who try to take advantage of the system in my opinion.
@wodun: I am sorry “ideology” and not the art determined Hugos? You mean the message we agree with is a good one, but the one we did not agree with is not. I have had read enough John C. Wright to last me a life time and that was three stories. All of them could be taught in Sunday School, especially crappy “Narnia” fanfiction. Thats the work where message comes after the story? That is the one?.
I was angry after I finished my not novels and not graphic novels reading – very angry at the time I will never get back, and thats pretty much a fact.
@Lille: I am bummed about “City of stairs” too, so very much.
@wodun:
The only people “afraid” of “SJW” are the puppies. The rest of us want to read good books and nominate the BEST books to win awards. The crap forced on us by the puppies???? So much CRAP that it made my eyes cross. God Bless. THAT was what VD and his ilk wanted to win??? No award. But mockery all around.
@Sirius: Exactly. IMO the idea that art is ideology- or value-free is one of the most successful illusions that the Puppies — especially VD, who pretty much admits to consciously manipulating ideological principles to piss people off — have managed to circulate to convince people of their ‘purity.’ What people generally mean when they call out “other” art as ideological is that it’s not in line with THEIR ideology, because people don’t often recognize ideology that meshes with their own, thus making those works seem ideologically free or neutral.
@wodun: Don’t forget the rest of the quote:
Also, referring to fans who disagree with the Puppies as “leftists” is pretty much the definition of political.
“there are finally writers and their fans who dare speak truth to power about the elitist popular cool kids who want to bully, intimidate, and excommunicate the nerds from society.”
Bwah-ha-ha!
SRSLY? You’re lumping the likes of N K Jemison, John Scalzi, Kameron Hurley, the Nielson-Haydens, Natalie Luhrs, Jim Hines, Foz Meadows, Ann Leckie, George Martin, et cetera, et alia, ad infinitum, as “elitists” who bully and marginalize *nerds*? Who on earth has heard of ANY of these people (well, maybe GRRM excepted, but not really) who hasn’t pretty significant nerd credentials of their own?
It takes a breathtakingly constricted view of “society” to even conceive of such an argument, let alone agree with it.
Which is fundamentally the root of the entire Puppies affair — as is cogently and generously argued here (speaking of Foz Meadows) :
https://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/hugos-puppies-peeling-the-onion/
I’m not that worried about next year, since they now have a large group of fans, much larger than the army VD claims to possess*, who are very motivated to nominate and vote for their favorites next year. That, in and of itself, should make slate voting and malicious attempts to have Noah Ward sweep everything next year far more difficult. After that, they’ll hopefully have fixed the flaw in the system that made slates too easy to implement.
*Since he admits they aren’t fans, I suspect the number he can reliably get to act may not be as high as he thinks.
::rolls eyes at wodun::
Everywhere the Hugo results have been discussed, the badly behaved canines have flooded comments with their ‘special’ take on reality.
Well, guess what? You didn’t convince people before the awards, and you won’t convince them now. You just sound sad, delusional, and really, really poor losers.
The fans spoke in their thousands, and the message was, “Fuck off. And keep your cheating mitts off our awards.”
I am especially pleased that the fans sent a very special “Fuck you” to Requires Hate and her sycophants. Sometimes the world works the way you want it to.
@Lille:
Of course he is because he’s a master manipulator (eyeroll). Frankly if he doesn’t like the Hugos he can throw his own damn award ceremony and circle jerk off all the writers at his press at his own leisure.
@hapax:
Love Foz. Seriously sometimes people/ readers don’t like your books for reasons other than your beliefs.