The 2016 Hugo Awards were held this past weekend at Worldcon in Kansas City, MO. If you only get your news from the same legacy outlets that libeled Sad Puppies leaders Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen, and Kate Paulk, you probably buy the Narrative that a cabal of right wing extremists tried to hijack the awards for nefarious political ends.
Because Worldcon welcomes everyone regardless of their personal beliefs and would never expel someone, much less a legendary SF editor, for disagreeing with them.
Worldcon has released the final voting results for the 2016 Hugo Awards. They tell a starkly different tale than the false media Narrative.
The truth is that Worldcon’s militant conformity to fringe politics is alienating the vast majority of SF fans. Everyone from young, up and coming authors to venerable masters of the craft are abandoning Worldcon like miners escaping a pit filled with toxic gas.
Case in point: the No Award-ing of Dr. Jerry Pournelle.
Dr. Pournelle is the definition of a living legend. He has been working in science fiction for almost 50 years. His There Will Be War anthologies are among the greatest in the genre’s history. Yet a majority of Hugo voters deemed him unworthy of consideration for Best Editor. They not only voted him below No Award, they banished him to last place.
Worldcon may as well have snubbed Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, or Frank Herbert. Their shabby treatment of Dr. Pournelle, and their ingratitude for his pivotal role in shaping the genre they claim to honor. proves beyond doubt that the Hugos have renounced their station as sci-fi’s most prestigious award.
Even more damning, no sane SF fan can look to the Hugos as a metric of literary quality. It’s now painfully obvious that the awards have been corrupted beyond all relevance.
By now might be thinking that the Hugos are a joke. But it gets worse.
Much, much worse.
Two nominees in the Best Related Work category this year were “Safe Space as Rape Room” and “The Story of Moira Greyland”. Both are chilling accounts of the very real child abuse allegations in the same old guard SF community that still controls Worldcon.
You can read both reports at the following links, but be warned, they’re not for the faint of heart.
Worldcon reacted to these scathing exposes by first banning them from the voter packet and then voting their entire category below No Award.
The clique that runs Worldcon has revealed itself as not just politically biased, but as so desperate to cover up allegations of child abuse that it burned its own house down in a clumsy attempt to hide the evidence.
Take it from a lifelong Catholic, Worldcon members. When your leadership tries to cover up evidence of child abuse, it never ends well.
Worldcon’s incessant political posturing, heavy-handed and arbitrary rules, and general depravity are taking their toll on the Hugos.
Best Novel is the most popular category and consistently gets the most votes. We can use it as a reliable metric of the Hugos’ public profile.
In one year, participation in the Hugos was almost cut in half. That is not a sign of a healthy, thriving award. Worldcon and its signature award is losing a self-inflicted war of attrition.
But speaking of healthy, thriving awards/conventions…
SF fans disgusted by Worldcon’s decline have been calling for a new award to replace the discredited Hugos for years. At last, Dragon Con has granted their wish.
Unlike the members-only Hugos, the Dragons are a true populist award that anyone can vote for. In fact, you can register to receive a free ballot right now.
Ask yourself who you’d rather party with:
 |
| Representative Worldcon Attendees |
 |
| Representative Dragon Con Attendees |
Google Trends gives us an indication of the public’s answer.
Rest in peace, Worldcon. I can’t say it was nice knowing you.
I don’t claim to be unbiased in this matter, even though I’m confident that neutral observers will reach the same conclusions from the documented evidence.
If I’m grateful to Worldcon for one thing, it’s that I now have something in common with the great Dr. Jerry Pournelle: we both placed last under No Award.
Being snubbed by geriatric perverts isn’t what I’d call a personal tragedy. However, the CHORFs have made the tactical error of insulting the readers who nominated me for the Campbell. The Worldcon clique have publicly rebuked my readers by declaring that I was unworthy of their consideration.
I answer to my readers; not a bunch of leftover hippies. To vindicate the fans who believed in me, I will dedicate my victory in the first annual Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel to them.
Though I’m doing this for you, I can’t do it without you. The Dragon Award winners will be decided entirely by the fans. If you enjoy my work, you have it in your power to confound the CHORFs who mocked you by taking an author you support from last place in the dying Hugos to first place in the rising Dragons.
To help you out, my Dragon-nominated SF/horror novel Souldancer is now 50% off in the Kindle Store. Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime subscribers can also download it free of charge.
Vote for your favorite books, movies, and games in the Dragon Awards by registering here for free.
Wait… does anyone else find it suspicious that "No Preference" garnered 545 votes for Best Editor (short form), but ZERO votes for "Best Related Work?"
The first is fairly normal in Hugo voting. The latter…
Up until now I've been fairly convinced that despite everything the folks counting Hugo ballots have at least been relatively honest at reporting the results. I absolutely don't believe that there were ZERO "No Preference" votes for "Best Related Work."
See? Spotting stuff like this is why I make friends with you math guys.
The blog appears to have eaten my other reply. I looked at the actual PDF, and this is just an artifact of the way they do their vote counting. There's nothing more to it than that. I should've looked before commenting instead of after.
No worries. We all make mistakes. Few enough of us own up to and correct them 🙂
As for Worldcon voting data shenanigans, Dave Freer, Vox, and I have encountered enough shady activity to more than justify your suspicions.
>Being snubbed by geriatric perverts isn't what I'd call a personal tragedy.
This line is 'Correia doing a fisking' level scathing.
Thanks. I have observed the International Lord of Hate practicing his art. Apparently it's rubbing off.
The difference between the Hugos and the Dragons was that I was able to nominate works for all the categories of the latter without much difficulty (checking date of publication was the trickiest bit) whereas I had a horrible time finding anything I wanted to nominate in the shorter fiction categories of Hugo.
Unsurprisingly when it came to voting the same applied. I had in fact read more than one entry in every book category (and in the Alt-Hist category I think I’d read all of them). The Hugos OTOH were a struggle if one was to vote intelligently and not mindlessly following a slate.
I’m sure I’m very far from alone in this. I expect this will mean that the Dragons will get many many more votes than the Hugos did this year and that they’ll get more and more in the years to come. Meanwhile the Hugos will likely decay back to their mid 2000s levels of irrelevance where it took about 100 votes to get a nomination and a block of a few hundred to ensure victory
"Meanwhile the Hugos will likely decay back to their mid 2000s levels of irrelevance…"
The data support your prediction, and a basic understanding of social dynamics indicates that the actual basement is a far lower level of relevance.
Nearly every aspect of the worldcon process seems backwards, dated, and asinine.
During Sasquan process I remember struggling to even find the link to the voting process as the link they put in the email was just to an 'about' section.
Compare that to how streamlined and easy the nomination form for the Dragon Awards was.
This I think speaks volumes about both the organizations running them, and the awards themselves.
SJWs are great at overrunning organizations.
Effectively running them? Not so much.
Exactly.
Well telling a large segment of your target audience to frack off and die doesn't sound like a good business strategy, but what do I know. On the up side, eventually they'll be able to hold the Worldcon in a back booth at Denny's. The Grandslam breakfast is the bomb.
The Denny's in my town closed years ago.
I'm jealous now. And hungry.