Tor Books, Puppies, and Boycotts

Ok. I have read the blogs. I have to say I really do not care. I do not. I do not buy any book based on who won the Hugo or the Nebula award. Just like I do not go to any movie based on how many nominations or if it won an Oscar. I do not care.

I will give my support by buying those books of (royalties) those authors I like because the story interests me not because some left wing right wing nut job is in charge of Tor, Baen, or any other publishing house.

I do not support the Hollywood crowd either and do not go to movies since Hollywood could not come up with an original story if their life depended on it. They go to the the authors of books for their new movies and then more often than not Hollywood changes the story line and or characters. Or they make a remake which is worse than the original. Hollywood is a social welfare program for those who could or would not hold down a 9 to 5 job by being productive.

Sorry I am on a rant and do not mean to... I love to read and I do not let Publisher bias sway me on what I want to read... Sorry end of story and off the soap box.

I've heard of the Hugo Awards and I think I've come across the Nebulae award before...
... I've generally just ignored them since from what little I've come across, half of it seems to be which agents can brown-nose the best.
I read based on the pillars of good writing, good characters and good plot-lines.
AFAIK, our resident Mad Wizard hasn't won even one of those awards (double-checked on Wikipedia), thus suggesting (to me, at least) that the awards are granted based on things other than sales and/or literary skill (and no, this isn't me sucking up. Once someone trolls you, you don't suck up to them).
A similar thing happens in Hollywood. Actors seem to get their Oscars not for appearing in popular films that break all box office records but for participating in box-office flops about disabled ethnic minority characters struggling against the unnecessary evils of a society created by stereo-typically stupid-evil white males... or some such similar plotlines.
Basically, it gets voted on by Guardian readers.(TVTropes link alert)
Yeah, I am cynical about these things. What gave it away?

gcomeau wrote:2. "There's a conspiracy by these people to rig the Hugo Awards in pursuit of their own liberal agendas."

The tenor of the conversation may be supporting evidence for 1, but GRRM's layout of the facts seems to convincingly refute 2.

Then GRRM has not laid out facts, he's laid out his opinions. And his opinions are PROVABLY wrong. You do not have the same two people win 2-3 Hugos each in ~5 years with almost exactly 65 votes each year without SOMETHING fishy going on. That alone does not a conspiracy prove... but just keep reading if you want ACTUAL facts as opposed to GRRM's wishful thinking...

You also don't have a PUBLIC panic attack when the "right" people don't get their Hugo nominations on time... before the official announcement of the Hugo nominations. There's only one way to be ABLE to launch a preemptive attack on the nominees. And that's by having known who "should" have been nominated and knowing they didn't get it in advance of the public announcement. Which requires coordination... aka, a whisper campaign... which is a synonym for "conspiracy".

So not only is there a proven conspiracy, it's also a provably INEPT one in that they're too stupid to keep their mouths shut and avoid outing themselves.


As for the rest, I haven't fully decided what to do. The only books I know of that are Tor which I've bought in years are Weber's. Most of the rest of their dreck is just that. I don't buy it because it's crap not worth buying, Irene's boorish behavior (and PNH/Moshe Feder doubling down on it) is just icing on the cake.

I hate to NOT support my favorite author. But I also have no desire whatsoever to give a single penny to such liberal extremists. So I'm torn. We'll see what happens in November, I guess. Well maybe by that point Macmillan will come to their senses even if Tor won't on its own.

Oh and while I must give Eric credit for the fact that he HAS tried to play a middle ground, he's done so in such an utterly stupid fashion as to be laughable. He asks people not to not use loaded language (good idea so far!)... so that he can calm tempers down (again good idea)... so he can attempt to convince people roughly 30IQ points higher than he that what is actually happening isn't happening.

Um... yeah. Good luck with that.

FriarBob wrote:

gcomeau wrote:2. "There's a conspiracy by these people to rig the Hugo Awards in pursuit of their own liberal agendas."

The tenor of the conversation may be supporting evidence for 1, but GRRM's layout of the facts seems to convincingly refute 2.

Then GRRM has not laid out facts, he's laid out his opinions. And his opinions are PROVABLY wrong. You do not have the same two people win 2-3 Hugos each in ~5 years with almost exactly 65 votes each year without SOMETHING fishy going on.

Ummm, why not? Just because you say so?

You also don't have a PUBLIC panic attack when the "right" people don't get their Hugo nominations on time... before the official announcement of the Hugo nominations. There's only one way to be ABLE to launch a preemptive attack on the nominees. And that's by having known who "should" have been nominated and knowing they didn't get it in advance of the public announcement. Which requires coordination...

Or... gossip. The Hugo nominations aren't exactly classified national security secrets.


Your entire "proven conspiracy" seems to rest on people hearing about and then not liking the outcome of the Puppies vote mobilization campaign. That makes for a pretty pathetic conspiracy.

FriarBob wrote:Then GRRM has not laid out facts, he's laid out his opinions. And his opinions are PROVABLY wrong. You do not have the same two people win 2-3 Hugos each in ~5 years with almost exactly 65 votes each year without SOMETHING fishy going on. That alone does not a conspiracy prove... but just keep reading if you want ACTUAL facts as opposed to GRRM's wishful thinking...

Speaking of conspiracies, isn't it a bit suspicious that the supposedly more democratic slate the Sad Puppies created was apparently compiled by Torgersen and his cabal alone, with little to no input from the public?

As for the rest, I haven't fully decided what to do. The only books I know of that are Tor which I've bought in years are Weber's. Most of the rest of their dreck is just that. I don't buy it because it's crap not worth buying, Irene's boorish behavior (and PNH/Moshe Feder doubling down on it) is just icing on the cake.

I hate to NOT support my favorite author. But I also have no desire whatsoever to give a single penny to such liberal extremists. So I'm torn. We'll see what happens in November, I guess. Well maybe by that point Macmillan will come to their senses even if Tor won't on its own.

Okay, a bit of perspective here. Irene Gallo made her comments on her private facebook page. At no point in that post did she claim to represent Tor Books in any way. Are you suggesting that people should not be allowed to make posts that disagree with the stances their employers take on social media?

And then there's the thing that, assuming that Gallo's statements are expressions of sentiments she held before the whole Sad Puppies bullshit, her work performance was apparently not in question; After all, John Wright worked with her without issue, right?

So, what conclusion can one draw? That Tor needs to be punished so that it institutes more draconic social media policies for its employees?
Or that Vox Day is incredibly good at riling up his side into doing really stupid and pointless things?

The E wrote:Speaking of conspiracies, isn't it a bit suspicious that the supposedly more democratic slate the Sad Puppies created was apparently compiled by Torgersen and his cabal alone, with little to no input from the public?

Brad Torgerson called for suggested nominations on his blog, and spoke to many of his friends and acquaintances in the SFF writing community as well. The comment threads were then filled with suggestions from a variety of people with a number of opinions. Torgerson went through them, and came up with a list of works that he had personally read and believed were worthy of a Hugo nomination.

"Democracy" had nothing to do with the *formulation* of Torgerson's list, and he never claimed otherwise. The democratic element in the Hugo awards takes place when the eligible voters submit their nominations and then vote on the resulting ballot.

There is a fair case to be made that Torgerson's involvement made the Hugos "more democratic" than in years past due to his efforts in publicizing the Hugo voting process and increasing voter turnout. The Worldcon voting pool has increased sharply in the past couple of years; more than doubling, if I remember correctly. My guess is that the pool of voters will continue to grow next year by virtue of increased publicity, both by Torgerson and his friends and others.

gcomeau wrote:Or... gossip. The Hugo nominations aren't exactly classified national security secrets.

Your entire "proven conspiracy" seems to rest on people hearing about and then not liking the outcome of the Puppies vote mobilization campaign. That makes for a pretty pathetic conspiracy.

The Worldcon committee makes a very serious effort at keeping the results of the nominations embargoed until they have completed their due diligence--once the nomination ballots have been compiled and totaled, the committee contacts each of the prospective nominees and asks their consent to be put on the final ballot. Various authors over the years have declined at this stage for various reasons. In fact, I believe that there was a minor crisis this year when an author accidentally confirmed in a Facebook post that he'd been contacted by the committee prior to the embargo date.

It is a matter of public record that TNH/PNH had reason to believe that the Puppies' campaigns were unexpectedly successful approximately a week before the embargo date. This was information that they should not have had access to at that point via official channels.

I don't think the reason is either mysterious or particularly scandalous, except in that it confirms that water coolers exist at Tor, and periodically people in the vicinity talk to each other. (This is at least partially a metaphor; I'm sure some of the "water-cooler conversation" happened online.)

TNH/PNH and their circle of friends among Tor staff and the larger community of SFF authors talk shop amongst themselves, and every year prior to the Hugos, no doubt conversations turn to opinions on what SFF was particularly good in the past year. "Person X" wrote a book that qualifies; Worldcon has liked stuff written by that author before; therefore Person X is likely to receive another nomination. Enough conversation and people "in the know" can usually make an educated guess at the general shape of the final Hugo ballot.

However, this year, due to the larger voting pool which was one result of the Puppies campaigns, a number of authors on the "in the know" educated-guess ballot were not contacted by the Worldcon committee. More water-cooler conversation ensued, and TNH/PNH deduced (correctly) that the Hugo ballot must include a large number of entries that they and their friends had not supported. (Obviously, the Worldcon committee can't tell people they *didn't* contact not to talk about the lack of a phone call.) Since the two Puppies campaigns were the only significant alternatives bubbling around social media this year, the inference that Puppies-supported works filled the missing slots was a perfectly logical next step.

I don't think TNH/PNH got leaked information that they were not entitled to. I do think that they had expectations about what the ballot would look like, and were able to confirm that those expectations were not met by hearing from authors who were "unexpectedly" not contacted by the Worldcon committee.

CSB wrote:Brad Torgerson called for suggested nominations on his blog, and spoke to many of his friends and acquaintances in the SFF writing community as well. The comment threads were then filled with suggestions from a variety of people with a number of opinions. Torgerson went through them, and came up with a list of works that he had personally read and believed were worthy of a Hugo nomination.

And so it happened that William Patterson's second part of his Heinlein biography didn't make the cut (because apparently Torgersen hadn't heard of it).

By reducing the slate to "What Torgersen personally approves of" and "What Vox Day personally approves of", the chances that the nominated works represent the best of SF in 2014 is greatly reduced.

"Democracy" had nothing to do with the *formulation* of Torgerson's list, and he never claimed otherwise.

Torgerson invited suggestions. Then proceeded to ignore them. For a campaign that had "The Hugos are not representative of what is actually popular in SF/F" as one of its core motivations, that's a bit strange, isn't it?

The democratic element in the Hugo awards takes place when the eligible voters submit their nominations and then vote on the resulting ballot.

Except that didn't happen, did it? People were simply copying Torgersen's and Beale's slates verbatim, resulting in what is probably the least diverse field of nominees in recent history (Not only in terms of more white male writers being nominated than previous, but also in terms of John C Wright getting 4 nominations across 2 categories).

And then we come to the kind of voter manipulation Beale has engaged in, threatening to "burn the Hugos to the ground" if his works, or works he promoted, get outvoted by "No Award". No matter what you may believe went on behind the scenes in previous years, this sort of very overt bullying, very overt politicization didn't happen.


I should make something clear here. Torgersen, Correia et al do have a point in that the Hugos, like any literary award, is not representative of what is popular. On that level, I certainly applaud the efforts they made to widen the voterbase. More voters is always better in this regard.

Where they went wrong is in getting these voters to vote according to a predefined slate. Surely, if the main grievance is that the voting has been fixed by a cabal that weeds out politically undesirable works, the correct answer isn't to found a countercabal that uses the same tactics? Surely the right answer would be to get people to vote according to their personal tastes, not the tastes of some dude on the internet somewhere?

Irene Gallo did not get in trouble for a 'private' facebook post unaffiliated with Tor, she got nailed for promoting a Tor release in her professional capacity and smearing everybody involved in the Puppies as racists etc etc etc. Stop trying to spin it away. She then compounded it with a classic non-apology 'I'm sorry you're offended' and now people are up in arms over her behavior. Feder then piled on, and was forced to delete the post after he first tried to claim 'oh, I'm being personal', then started with the royal 'we', and this AFTER Tor had gone on record that Gallo's post was wrong and strengthening their social-media policy.

Nice diversions, though, those goal posts must be heavy to move all the time.

LordSunhawk wrote:Irene Gallo did not get in trouble for a 'private' facebook post unaffiliated with Tor, she got nailed for promoting a Tor release in her professional capacity and smearing everybody involved in the Puppies as racists etc etc etc.

Wrong. This is the post on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/igallo/posts/10152728739637461

Note that the initial post only has a bit of sly commentary on making sad puppies sadder, which I think you'll agree is not offensive.
Note also that it is on her private facebook page.

The parts you're objecting to are in her response to a followup comment. Now, I agree that that comment was probably a bit too hyperbolic, but I challenge you to actually define what she did wrong there. Does she have an obligation to hide her opinions? Does she have an obligation to tone down her rhetoric on her own private page?
You can feel free to be offended by that statement. You are also free not to buy any more books that Gallo has worked on or will work on.
What you can not do, in my opinion, is to demand she apologize to you, personally.

Now, let's dissect her statement some more, shall we?
This is it, in its entirety:

There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic. A noisy few but they've been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year's Hugo ballot.

Now, can Sad Puppies be classified as "extreme right-wing"? Right-wing, definitely, extreme, well, it's a matter of definition. Can Rabid Puppies be called "neo-nazi"? That one's actually harder to define (mostly because there's no generally accepted definition of "Neo-Nazi"), but Theodore Beale/Vox Day, Tom Kratman et al have very definitively positioned themselves as the Tea Party to Torgersen's and Correia's GOP. Beale in particular is a professional troll, and has so very often professed extreme right-wing opinions that to call him a neo-nazi may be justified.

Now, the next statement is "They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic." Torgersen and Correia? Not any of these things, as far as I can tell. Beale and Wright? Oh hell yes, and given that Beale's movement is the more successful of the two, including giving Wright 4 Hugo nominations at once, characterizing the entire puppy movement as racist, misogynist and homophobic, while hyperbole, is also not entirely unfounded.

Next: "A noisy few but they've been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year's Hugo ballot."
Both Puppy campaigns have certainly caused noise, they definitely recruited gamergate into this little scheme due to a shared hatred of that nebulous SJW enemy, and while I cannot personally comment on most of the works on the Hugo ballot, the way in which the two slates were assembled certainly reeks of favoritism (Again, Wright may be a good writer, but he does not deserve 4 fucking nominations and Castalia House is not the singular source for good SF that Beale thinks it is).

Stop trying to spin it away.

Stop trying to make this a bigger thing than it is.

She then compounded it with a classic non-apology 'I'm sorry you're offended' and now people are up in arms over her behavior.

Behaviour, it has to be repeated, on her own personal facebook page. Not in official Tor Books statements. Not on official Tor Books channels.
In a fucking comment on her own facebook page, for fucks sake.
Please give me a reason why an employer should have the right to dictate what his employees post on their own webspaces.

The E wrote:

LordSunhawk wrote:Irene Gallo did not get in trouble for a 'private' facebook post unaffiliated with Tor, she got nailed for promoting a Tor release in her professional capacity and smearing everybody involved in the Puppies as racists etc etc etc.

Wrong. This is the post on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/igallo/posts/10152728739637461

Note that the initial post only has a bit of sly commentary on making sad puppies sadder, which I think you'll agree is not offensive.
Note also that it is on her private facebook page.

The parts you're objecting to are in her response to a followup comment. Now, I agree that that comment was probably a bit too hyperbolic, but I challenge you to actually define what she did wrong there. Does she have an obligation to hide her opinions? Does she have an obligation to tone down her rhetoric on her own private page?
You can feel free to be offended by that statement. You are also free not to buy any more books that Gallo has worked on or will work on.
What you can not do, in my opinion, is to demand she apologize to you, personally.

Now, let's dissect her statement some more, shall we?
This is it, in its entirety:

There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic. A noisy few but they've been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year's Hugo ballot.

Now, can Sad Puppies be classified as "extreme right-wing"? Right-wing, definitely, extreme, well, it's a matter of definition. Can Rabid Puppies be called "neo-nazi"? That one's actually harder to define (mostly because there's no generally accepted definition of "Neo-Nazi"), but Theodore Beale/Vox Day, Tom Kratman et al have very definitively positioned themselves as the Tea Party to Torgersen's and Correia's GOP. Beale in particular is a professional troll, and has so very often professed extreme right-wing opinions that to call him a neo-nazi may be justified.

Now, the next statement is "They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic." Torgersen and Correia? Not any of these things, as far as I can tell. Beale and Wright? Oh hell yes, and given that Beale's movement is the more successful of the two, including giving Wright 4 Hugo nominations at once, characterizing the entire puppy movement as racist, misogynist and homophobic, while hyperbole, is also not entirely unfounded.

Next: "A noisy few but they've been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year's Hugo ballot."
Both Puppy campaigns have certainly caused noise, they definitely recruited gamergate into this little scheme due to a shared hatred of that nebulous SJW enemy, and while I cannot personally comment on most of the works on the Hugo ballot, the way in which the two slates were assembled certainly reeks of favoritism (Again, Wright may be a good writer, but he does not deserve 4 fucking nominations and Castalia House is not the singular source for good SF that Beale thinks it is).

Stop trying to spin it away.

Stop trying to make this a bigger thing than it is.

She then compounded it with a classic non-apology 'I'm sorry you're offended' and now people are up in arms over her behavior.

Behaviour, it has to be repeated, on her own personal facebook page. Not in official Tor Books statements. Not on official Tor Books channels.
In a fucking comment on her own facebook page, for fucks sake.
Please give me a reason why an employer should have the right to dictate what his employees post on their own webspaces.

Because you are completely stripping the context away from her 'private personal Facebook post', which was the promotion of a Tor novel in her professional capacity as a TOR employee. In other words, it was an OFFICIAL statement in her OFFICIAL capacity. The protest about it was enough to spur the HEAD of TOR to post an official statement disavowing the statement and stating *that going forward* when employees used social media in their personal capacity they would be required to say so explicitly and not conflate personal and official IN THE SAME FUCKING POST, and not to engage in this sort of behavior while doing OFFICIAL business. Then when ANOTHER TOR editor did the exact same thing, he first had to dance 'oh, I meant this post in my private capacity', then updated again talking in the official corporate 'we', then finally deleted the entire thing in the vain hope of making it go away.

Your spin is hilarious, very typical for the puppy kickers. And wrong. Irene Gallo WAS speaking as an employee of TOR when she spewed that vile bit of bilious bile, equating men who fought and bled against REAL neo-Nazi's and racists to the KKK. And you stand with her. I bet you stand with Requires Hate and MZB and her husband as well. All SJW's in good standing and no doubt deserving of Hugo's in your mind.

And nice bit of rhetorical dancing around the fact that at no point did Gallo differentiate between SP and RP in her condemnation of them, and her blanket statement that the entire slate was badfic by badauthors unworthy of Hugo's because badthought. You are trying anything, anything at all, to justify her disgusting post. And in order to do so you've mounted the goalposts on tractors so you can move them at will.