Tor Books, Puppies, and Boycotts

Senior Chief wrote: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 have to agree with this. The award nominations and ceremonies generally happen *after* a book is printed or a movie hits the screen. Generally, I don't even *know* a particular book or title has gotten an award until some subsequent reprint or the DVD comes out. In the case of a movie, I've already seen it by then if it even possibly might have interested me. In the case of a book, I've either borrowed it and read it, found it online, or got a really cheap copy at someplace that sells used books.

And in a majority of the cases, books and movies that get awards are *NOT* ones I would have voted to receive them anyway had it been up to me.

A couple of observations....

1) I generally *don't care* what position anyone takes on their own, personal initiative. And, unless it's obviously going to have a huge impact of some sort, I don't really care what various "spokespeople" in corporations say, either; unless they say it's actual corporate policy.

2) Science fiction has, for a really, really long time, always had at least a bit of "social commentary" mixed into it. Perhaps the original "Star Trek" series was one of the most obvious examples of this; but even prior to that one could recognize at least *some* leanings in that area. But I wouldn't say social commentary is what *sells* mainstream science fiction. Personally, a novel that is *only* or even *mostly* "social commentary" without having an interesting plot, story, and some decent technical devices wouldn't be very interesting to me. On the other hand, there have been novels with *no* discernible social commentary that *have*.

3) There's no way I'd participate in any "boycott" of a individual, group, or corporate entity *UNLESS* I saw some indication of direct, incontrovertible harm in their *ACTIONS*. Like a factory causing significant, unrepairable damage to the environment, for example.

Now, personally, I don't tend to buy much in the way of *new* books published by TOR. It's not because of any particular statement or, as far as I know, known *policy* of TOR, it's just because the books they've been publishing recently I haven't found interesting enough to want to buy. (David's books being an exception.) If one looks at *all* the science fiction books I own, however, there's a fair percentage of ones published by TOR - though mostly older ones. By authors whose works I enjoyed reading, or, sometimes, some *individual* work that interested me even if the particular author wasn't a favorite of mine.

I buy the books I want to, not based on publisher. If anything, the only major beef I have with TOR itself is its lack of offering eARCs.

That said, I've often thought that the award awarding *process* for both movies and books wasn't exactly "democratic" in principle. It's not generally a "popularity contest"; the general public doesn't really have much input. Which is at least *one* of the reasons I don't consider any won awards when making my viewing or reading choices.

OrlandoNative wrote:2) Science fiction has, for a really, really long time, always had at least a bit of "social commentary" mixed into it. Perhaps the original "Star Trek" series was one of the most obvious examples of this; but even prior to that one could recognize at least *some* leanings in that area. But I wouldn't say social commentary is what *sells* mainstream science fiction. Personally, a novel that is *only* or even *mostly* "social commentary" without having an interesting plot, story, and some decent technical devices wouldn't be very interesting to me. On the other hand, there have been novels with *no* discernible social commentary that *have*.

There's a long-running rumor/theory that several of the Dr Who episodes (especially "The Happiness Patrol") were written as an attack on the then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Although the BBC officially denied it at the time, the actor Sylvester McCoy later strengthened the rumor in an interview. Given the growing left-wing bias at the BBC at the time (a bias which has only got worse), the lack of surprise most people feel about this "revelation" is perhaps the only surprise.

Since that day, though, the BBC appears to have been engaged in a near-constant low-level war against the Tories. The coverage of the last election (during which a BBC reporter asked left-wing Guardian Columnist/Labour Supporter Polly Toynbee "What went wrong?") strongly supports the left-wing bias of the BBC. Of course, it is only to be expected as most BBC jobs are advertised in The Guardian, thus pre-filtering the political leanings of the applicants.

OrlandoNative wrote:Now, personally, I don't tend to buy much in the way of *new* books published by TOR. It's not because of any particular statement or, as far as I know, known *policy* of TOR, it's just because the books they've been publishing recently I haven't found interesting enough to want to buy. (David's books being an exception.) If one looks at *all* the science fiction books I own, however, there's a fair percentage of ones published by TOR - though mostly older ones. By authors whose works I enjoyed reading, or, sometimes, some *individual* work that interested me even if the particular author wasn't a favorite of mine.

I've heard this mentioned from a few people lately, and if it represents anything like a trend, it's very, very bad news for Tor--much worse than a small-scale boycott. I have to say, my bookshelves are in a similar state--rather a lot of books by Tor, but most of them older books. There are only three authors currently being published by Tor that I have any interest in, and one of them publishes most of his stuff through Baen (MWW, of course). The other two authors are sufficiently popular that I could keep up with them by visiting my local library.

OrlandoNative wrote:That said, I've often thought that the award awarding *process* for both movies and books wasn't exactly "democratic" in principle. It's not generally a "popularity contest"; the general public doesn't really have much input. Which is at least *one* of the reasons I don't consider any won awards when making my viewing or reading choices.

Different awards are determined on different bases. Take movies, for example. The Oscars are effectively a "juried" award: the selections are done by people in the movie-making business. On the other hand, the People's Choice awards solicits and collects votes from the general public. Within SFF, the Nebulas are most similar to the Oscars in that they are a juried award selected by the members of SFWA. The Hugos are more like the People's Choice award in that anyone can vote so long as you buy a supporting membership to Worldcon for that year.

Recent issues with the Hugos have been the result of the shrinking voting pool, as they have been poorly publicized. Very few people in the broader SFF fandom were even aware that they could vote on the Hugos, and even fewer have done so; as a result, the voting and *especially* the nominations process was captured by a tiny though well-connected group of people whose tastes diverge substantially from the larger SFF fandom generally.

One of the most basic goals of Sad Puppies 3 was to bring diversity back to the Hugos by publicizing the voting process more broadly and encouraging more and more people to get involved with promoting the type of SFF they like and want to see more of. Over the past 2-3 years, the number of nominating ballots has more than doubled, and I expect that the controversy will attract even more voters over the next few years.