38 thoughts on “August 23, 2015: Still in It”

  1. Are the Hugos dead?

    The members of the World Science Fiction Society rejected the slate of finalists in five categories, giving No Award in Best Novella, Short Story, Related Work, Editor Short Form, and Editor Long Form. This equals the total number of times that WSFS members have presented No Award in the entire history of the Hugo Awards, most recently in 1977.

    1. A record number of ballots were cast this year to make those no awards happen (some categories were 90% no award). If the nominations spike in the near future, I'm betting the puppies will be less and less likely to put down money to nominate works that
      a) will never win
      b) might not even make the ballot

      1. I think Rand Paul should form his own Hugo Award certification board and take all the Rabid Puppies with him. 😉

    2. Oof, I nearly stopped reading at "puppygate". I'm close to make it my life mission to eradicating the world of the -gate suffix.

      But more seriously, I'm not finished reading yet, and I've only followed this Hugo thing at the surface, but that Larry Correia feller should probably not let himself be quoted anymore.

      1. 100% with you on the -gate suffix. I'm kind of hoping for some future scandal somehow involving actual gates. Could Gategate kill this stupid word usage?

        Or maybe a big push to point out how dumb this really is? #gatesuffixgate

        1. Does the suffix really rub you raw? #grategate

          Should we treat the suffix as if it has already died? #lategate

          Am I really just trying to earn some negative currency here? #baitgate

        1. Because Watergate wasn't a scandal about city water supply, it was where the scandal happened.

          1. Bingo!

            If Tom Brady had conspired to spike the water of the opposing team with performance diminishing drugs, think it would be called watergate?

          2. So what? Words/phrases come from all sorts of places. No one thinks Watergate was about a water scandal, and no one makes that claim by using the suffix which entered our language after that scandal.

            1. Exactly. The suffix immediately signals "scandal", even for those too young to really recognize what Watergate was.

              I imagine that if it had not been for the Great Depression and WWII wiping clean our national memories of anything that happened between the Civil War and 1929, we'd be using some variant of Teapot Dome today in the same capacity.

              1. I imagine that if it had not been for the Great Depression and WWII wiping clean our national memories of anything that happened between the Civil War and 1929, we'd be using some variant of Teapot Dome today in the same capacity.

                Challenge accepted.

                1. I'd suggest it often denotes something larger than mere scandal - usually some sort of premeditated wrongdoing and subsequent coverup. Not always, but it isn't like "gate" just gets attached to everything. We don't have "Benghazigate" for example.

              2. The only question is, should I call my disdain and outrage the Watergate Dome scandal or the Teapot Watergate scandal?

            2. If they come from all sorts of places, they can be shoved back into all sorts of places too. (I don't care if that makes no sense, this is a pet-peeve after all)

                    1. Might as well go the whole way there, right?

                      httpv://youtu.be/Kpe_KHDEfgw?list=RDKpe_KHDEfgw

    3. Not a single Puppy-endorsed candidate took home a rocket.

      Guardians of the Galaxy was on the Puppy ballot and won.

      The Three Body Problem (winner of best novel) was endorsed after the nomination process by several prominent Puppies (including the leader of the Rabid Puppy movement).

      1. Martin's Loser's Party was kind of interesting, and certainly consistent with the long history of the Con. I really hope this whole thing blows over and the trolls move on to something else.

  2. Finished McCullough's The Wright Brothers on the flight to Munich thurs night. Great read and well written.

    Fabulous squid ink pasta with black truffles tonight in Brixen/Bressanone. Dolomites hike tomorrow.

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