I'm at least two pages behind here and will remain at least a page behind so please bear with me.
Let me address this first and apologize:
As to the sports thing, I can address it but my time is limited, I doubt anyone here really cares, and I have the distinct feeling you're setting me up with a tangential strawman argument by making ME defend people that think sports are evil, something I've never even touched on, let alone espoused.
I'm very sorry about that aspect of the post. There's no "end response to quote" button or anything so I left that post in a confusing state. I quoted you and the first part of my post was in response to that. In that first paragraph, I linked to the "reasonably short post" and that's the same thread that included the "Romans and sports" thing that I brought in starting with "Incidentally, this sort of thing is pretty common". At that point I was just on a tangent addressing the mentality of that poster. I in
no way was attributing that to you, or trying to get you to defend it or anything, but I can certainly see how it read like that. So, again, sorry for that clumsiness in that post.
On the other hand, there's this:
Again, I'll point to the word "most". No, "most" wouldn't seem to indicate a political test. There's no doubt the slate is far right of a usual awards slate lately but there's also no doubt some works were not put on there solely on a political test. I'm sure the righteous will know what was in their hearts and say they put those token liberal works on their precisely to refute the point and that may be so but, still, there are works and authors who don't pass a right-wing political test.
Because it's self-defeating and hypocritical. He complains that the award slate is too focused on PC-diversity, then he consciously selects an equally diverse slate of nominees specifically in order to avoid any accusations of being racist... aka, he did exactly what he's claiming the Hugo's shouldn't do: selecting nominees based on political and not literary reasons (which is why he makes such a big deal about his slate is not racist and is just as diverse).
I called it.
If he'd have posted an all-white-male slate he wouldn't be hypocrite but would be crucified for being a racist sexist fiend. With a slate of mixed gender and race, he's still a racist sexist fiend to many and a hypocrite to some. It is, of course, irrefutable that a non-SP mixed ballot is all about the quality. It is impossible for an SP mixed ballot to be about quality.
This is where the "damned if you do; damned if you don't" and "stacked deck" and "guilty until proven innocent" expressions come from.
I doubt he's too worried about his prospects for future success
there's no such thing as feeling certain of future success
And, again, the usual tactic of pulling absolutes out of relatives. Where does "not too worried" about "prospects" mean "certain"?
He thinks the Hugo are too literary and elitist and anything more complicated than a KJA novel or an Avengers movie is too snobbish and elitist for him.
This is so spot on. Calling Redshirts or Among Others "too literary" is so ridiculous it's almost funny.
This is a similar tactic from different people. I don't recall him mentioning
Among Others at all and maybe not even
Redshirts, though he may well have. Just because he proposes a ballot as a counterweight doesn't mean a KJA novel or Avengers movie is the limits of his definition of snobbery and elitism. I'm rather dismayed that his writing is so much better than his apparent reading (based on all his
Analog choices vs. all of mine, where any
Analog story would correct at least the anti-
Analog imbalance and where I know all about the options and Torgersen and I almost completely disagree) but selecting an item or two of a single ballot proposed to correct (any kind of supposed) imbalance as the height and limit of someone's literary tastes is logical dirty pool.
He's also a mediocre writer at best. That nominated novellete of his last year where the brave marines defeated the evil Commies in space was an embarrassing cliche and stylistically mediocre.
As I said
in my review, it is an old-fashioned story that might put off some but it was efficiently accomplished and quite good for what it was. It was not stylistically "medicore" but stylistically "clean" - which will always seem "mediocre" or worse to those who like "ornate" or other non-clean varieties. I suppose stories about spaceships, VR, aliens, changed societies, etc., are all embarrassingly cliche, as well? Or does SF reuse old tropes with changed circumstances to make them new for a new audience? But reject all of this out of hand, I don't care. Only read "The Chaplain's Legacy" (a complex, nuanced story about aliens and religion suitable for the devout and atheist alike, reviewed a little more thoroughly
here). I don't know how much you've read but judging him on the single story you cite hardly seems fair. "I read a mediocre story and had no interest in more" is fair. "He's also a mediocre writer at best" isn't, especially if you haven't read among the "best".
it's like not like they would ever read the work of that commie SJW Scalzi.
Again, if that commie SJW Scalzi writes subliterary work, it's laughable that it's "elite" but perfectly okay that it wins a Hugo. If that Nazi fascist KJA writes a subliterary work, it's beneath contempt and even being nominated for a Hugo ruins them and disgraces the nominator. "I'm a liberal non-racist non-sexist who has high literary standards and thinks it's great that pop stuff like Scalzi wins awards and all who disagree with me are scum. Ain't I just the greatest thing on earth - I can do no wrong! "THEY" can do no right!" Made in the shade.
his genre is getting unfashionable
Again, you must be new here. Print SF is utterly unfashionable. His subgenre has been unfashionable for about 30 years but he started doing it anyhow. And a couple-three years ago he was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell anyway. So he bucked the trends and had something good enough about him to begin succeeding anyway. See next quote.
His whole post is littered with the double speak I mentioned... the awards aren't a big deal, but everyone I like HAS to be recognized at them for them to have legitimacy.
Have you no sense of time? The manned space program is no big deal but putting a man on the moon was huge. "You double-speaking liar!" The Hugos were a big deal and have become less so and I'd like for them to be more so again. Where is the double-speak in that? Here's my own little Romans and sports story: I came across issues of IAsfm and Analog (in a freakin' grocery store!) and, on the back, was an ad for the SFBC where, as part of the promo deal, you could get The Hugo Winners, Vol. I & II, edited by Isaac Asimov. On the
cover of that book is a depiction of a bronze plaque on fine wood with ornate writing with the names of Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Fritz Leiber, Murray Leinster, Larry Niven, Robert Silverberg, Clifford D. Simak, Jack Vance, and more. Granted, there's only Anne McCaffrey as a woman and Samuel R. Delany as black (and gay) but that's not what they're there for - they're there because they wrote great stuff. Left, right, high, low, technofetishist, technophobic, it's all there. The hall of the gods!
I sold the
The New Hugo Winners, Vol. IV (1997) after reading it because 2/3 of the book represented by the 1992 and 1993 selections (except the Sheffield) sucked and the series ceased publication with that volume. Wrap your head around that - the premier award for field can't even sustain an anthology series. (The Nebulas survive, probably because subsidized, but certainly little-read.)
So, yeah, I join that double-speak - the awards were a roster of the gods and don't mean much now but could again. Maybe people would even buy the damned anthologies.
He's being slandered because he's being a whiner.
As I say, he's been nominated for plenty of awards and recused himself from his own ballot and is acting to correct something he sees - rightly or wrongly - as imbalanced. Where is that "whining". And even if it is, the spectacular callousness of your remark amazes me. "You whined. You racist sexist mediocre hack. Tell your daughter what a son of a bitch racist you are!"
This is justice? This is liberal? This is love?
Liberals used to try to be better than that which opposed them.
I'm saying that if you invoke affirmative action, you make it a debate about race
Affirmative action does not reduce to race. It applies to gender, creed, orientation, and everything else. And his thesis is that he didn't make it about this - he's responding to it having been made about this. But, yeah, it certainly brings it into the conversation either way. But it doesn't mean you can't be a nice guy who's not a bigot on either side of the affirmative action debate. As I say, there are minorities who don't want what they see as an artificial helping hand and see it as patronizing and demeaning like they can't accomplish things for themselves. Doesn't make them bigoted. And I would hope that "majority" people could simply agree without being necessarily evil.
The bottom line is I don't really know or care if this particular guy is racist (though I have to say I'm curious why you seem so invested in defending his reputation, and his alone)
He's the only author of all this that I've read and liked; I've read his blog on occasion and, while he uses a lot of profanity for a Mormon ("my best friend was a Mormon" when I lived out West as a kid, so I know), he seems like a decent guy who's genuinely being unjustly savaged. Now, he could turn into a rabid villain tomorrow and I'd be embarrassed and have to disavow him but, so far, I enjoy his fiction and find nothing objectionable about him as a person. More importantly, this touches on all kinds of issues both within SF and without that I care deeply about. I see people tarnishing the name of "liberal" and it impels me to stupidly speak out yet again even though it never does any good.
