An Open Letter To Brad Torgersen

[chris_gerrib]

Various thoughts related to Hugo and Puppies:

1) EPH does not take 76 pages to explain. The entire WSFS business packet was 76 pages, including eight new constitutional amendments, 4 from last year, various committee reports and financial reports from six or seven Worldcons. EPH only took up 3 pages of that.

2) We doubled the number of Hugo voters this year vs. last year. Last year was a doubling from the year before. How the hell many fans does Worldcon need to get to vote before the Puppies consider it valid?

3) Related to the above, Brad, you keep claiming that we should "open the voters to Comic-Con." How do you know that Comic Con would come up with a different result? Did you do a survey of attendees? If so, can we see the results? If not, why is your opinion of that group's voting preferences any better than mine?

4) The story awards are not and never were for "author I'd like to have a beer with." They are for "story that grabbed me by the short hairs and said 'come here, big boy.'" Nothing, not one word in any of your posts has ever defended or explained the merits of the work nominated. You complained that tie-in novels get no respect, yet didn't nominate a tie-in novel! You want to win a Hugo in a story category, tell me what makes the story good, not what makes the author good or another story bad.

5) I am sad that Sheila Gilbert did not get a Hugo in Editor, Long Form. Regardless, 2,496 of 4,907 voters (50.8%) felt that slate voting needed to be punished. Brad, you brought the slate, you get to take the fall for this. If you steal the Enterprise, when it blows up you own that too.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I see the talking points have been distributed...

How about Nancy Kress or Rachel Swirsky or May Rickert or Ursula Vernon or Aliette de Bodard or Seanan McGuire or a bunch of others who didn't get a look in?

What a pillock.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

yes, and now Brad is "editing" our remarks to read "you made me do it." (Literally.)

I have apparently touched a nerve on him.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I can see, I felt for him. I felt enough to go and prod it a bit too.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Awwww... banned too :)

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Well said! I'm not going to raise my blood pressure by reading any of the Puppy responses - and I'm finding their (Facebook) responses to my blog post about the Hugo Awards useful in cleaning up my "follow" feed.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I was appalled to see Brad editing people's comments to make it look like he was being trolled. When I saw your name I was sure. I know perfectly well that leaning on the capslock is not one of your failings.

I get that he's having a meltdown right now, but still, that was bearing false witness.

You know what makes me sad? The Puppies slating shoved Eugie Foster's last published short story "When It Ends, He Catches Her" off the Hugo Ballot in favor of crud like "On A Spiritual Plane" and "The Parliament Of The Birds And The Beasts." Sorry as I am about Sheila Gilbert, she'll have other chances. Eugie Foster died last year; there will be no other chances for her.

I earnestly hope that the new Hugo Voters will join me in watching for great SFF that comes out this year, writing it down somewhere they can find it in January, and nominating it. While it won't be sufficient to stop the slate, I think it will be a necessary part of the solution.

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

The answer: at bare minimum, 20,000-50,000. Ideally, twice that. Compared to the media cons, Worldcon is a rounding error. 101,000 people attended the Denver ComiCon this year. (Denver is the nation's 21st largest city.) That's an order of magnitude more people than attend Worldcon at its very best. This has to change, or "Worldcon" means essentially nothing.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Polling firms survey around 1500 people (PDF) (http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_National_90315.pdf) to predict a national election. They are batting over 90% accuracy. We had over 10,000 paying members, 6,000 of whom voted. That seems to be a good sample of science fiction fandom.