As a follow-up to his previous piece on the 2015 Hugo Awards/Sad Puppies debacle, George R.R. Martin has done one of the best-constructed refutations of the Sad Puppies’ claims of some kind of Social Justice Warrior conspiracy hijacking a once-great awards series that you could wish for. It also helps that Martin effectively rebuts all the claims that Larry Correia made in response to his first post on the topic – and given the density of his analysis, has left a huge mountain for Correia to scale to put together a fitting response. (Yes, in other words, Correia is manufacturing a false case of exclusion based on little to no substantial fact, despite his claims of encountering “WorldCon voters angry that a right-wing Republican (actually I’m a libertarian) who owned a gun store (gasp) was nominated for the prestigious Campbell.”)

“I have read Correia’s blog, and I know he says that he was treated very badly at the Reno worldcon, attacked for his views, denounced as a racist and homophobe,” Martin does say. “It shocks me to hear it, because the fandom I know has always been warm and welcoming to people of all political views. We are there to party and flirt and celebrate SF, after all. I regret any personal attacks or abuse that Correia may have suffered.”

That said, he concludes, “there was never any need for Sad Puppies to ‘take back’ the Hugos. The feminists, minorities, literary cliques, and Social Justice Warriors never took them in the first place. That’s a myth, as the actual facts I have cited here prove conclusively.”

I’m certainly not going to waste readers’ time by regurgitating Martin’s analysis – it’s all there in full at the link if you want to pore through it. Suffice it to say that the facts he lists demonstrate nothing resembling a SJW-organized hijacking of the series, or a systematic tendency to exclude those of slightly-less-left-than-Pol-Pot-ish leanings – even recently.

And yes, the parallels drawn between GamerGate and the Sad Puppies are becoming all too painfully obvious again, with a manufactured grievance cited as the justification for a sweeping, messy, venomous and highly destructive campaign that harms and sullies what it professes to defend.

Can George go back to writing world-class “traditional” war-and-gore fantasy now, please? Because he shouldn’t have to waste his time putting together such a comprehensive rebuttal to a non-scandal in search of a non-agenda. The Sad Puppies royally screwed the pooch. And I hope they get off.

 

 

 

2 COMMENTS

  1. I am politcally conservative, religiously conservative and socially conservative; and I think this is a terrible waste of time. The Hugo’s have not been hijacked. I have been reading some of the latest nominees and they are writing really interesting SF/F. Yes, it may not be what the Sad Puppies like, but it is still very good (and sometimes great) SF/F. I agree with GRRM on not changing the rules, but just becoming more active in the nominating stage. I also agree that it is not a good idea to No Award indiscriminately. Play the game by the rules. Be kind and fair to everyone, even people you do not like or agree with. I love the old SF/F writers and I love a lot of the new SF/F writers. Some, I do not read (of course), but who had time to read everything anyway.

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