... Okay, you probably do, especially if you hang out in the Puppy community. And if you cannot believe it, well you may just be a Puppy Kickers and never saw this coming.
Heh heh heh.
Anyway ... did I ever mention that I love press releases? They do all of my work for me.
Now, everyone knows that I love DragonCon. Just look at my reports from any previous years. I have been there, done that, and I only wish it was easier to afford.
However, I may just have to force myself to go down there this year.
You may have heard, DragonCon has just announced The Dragon Awards: Dragon Awards, "a program of fan-chosen awards to recognize outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy literature, comics, gaming and filmed entertainment."
Gee, I wonder if that sounds anything like another certain award ... naaaahhhh.
Click here to sign up. Go ahead, I won't mind if you did it this minute and stepped away from the article. Heh heh heh.
Isn't that kind of awesome? I even love the breakdown of the categories. They're so varied and specific, so that different genres aren't competing for the same award. Isn't that something special? Unique? Different?
And considering that this is from a convention that includes such wide-ranging topics, tracks, and over SIXTY THOUSAND MEMBERS, That's not bad.
The funny thing is that this isn't the first time I've heard about it. My fellow Puppies have been anticipating, batting around, and daydreaming about the idea for the last year and a half.
Considering that the Hugos of WorldCon like to call themselves fandom most prestigious award, I wonder what that will make the Dragon? Fandom's most important award? Most representative award? Most kick-ass award? (Seriously, between a plastic rocket ship and a dragon, I'd rather have a dragon on my mantel).
As you can assume, my fellow Puppies are over the moon about this. Even John C. Wright.
But this occurs to me, that means the Sad Puppies have already won. It's over. We can all go home now. Come on, everybody, let's move on. Let's pack up...
What's that you ask? Why declare victory and go home? It's simple: the Puppy Kickers have decided that they would rather burn down the Hugos than let anyone else play with their toys. Fine. I'm sure Vox Day will hand them the matches and splash some gasoline around. And the Puppy Kickers can declare that they drove us off, and clap themselves on the back, and slowly die in obscurity among fewer and fewer people who even know that they exist.
But this? Butcher goes to DragonCon. And Larry Correia. And John Ringo. And David Weber. And the cast of Arrow and the actors from Daredevil, and a whole bunch of really cool people
Sad Puppies 3 and 4 had the stated goal that wanted the Hugos to represent good, entertaining, quality fiction. Why? To have an award that was free of politics and personality conflicts, and solely about the work of fiction itself.
Now? Why bother? We don't need to be abused, bullied, harassed or slandered online in order to find an award that's about good books. There's the Dragon. Nobody owns it but the fans. Lots and lots of fans. Thousands upon thousands of fans.
Who needs the Hugos?
To quote Brad Torgersen from his Facebook page.
And so: the final nail in the coffin of the Hugo awards. Looks like the Dragon Award is basically going to be doing everything Sad Puppies was hoping to get the Hugos to eventually do, but Dragon Con is doing it without having to wade through all the histrionic, caterwauling drama that resulted from the self-appointed defenders of Worldcon correctness and propriety throwing the genre's all-time biggest temper tantrum. I raise my glass to this, and predict that within ten years, a gold-foil DRAGON AWARD label on a book is going to routinely replace both NEBULA and HUGO labels.While I don't know about the Nebula, I'm reasonably certain he's 100% correct on the Hugos.
To heck with the Hugos. If I could get one of these Dragons, that would be awesome. Right now, the best part of getting a Hugo nomination would be the death threats. Yes. Come on, we all know the minute that I get the nomination, we're going to have a sudden surge of how evil conservative racist, homophobic Catholic I am. I'm sure that Entertainment Weekly has a folder somewhere about every bad thing ever said by any Puppy at any time, and they can pull a few quotes out of context. If they ever get around to me, I'll be amused to see what happens.
But a Dragon Award? Oh, hell yes. Please and thank you. I would take that and splash it over every novel from now until Hell froze over. Yeah. That would be amazing.
Now, here's how you apply for the Dragon Award voting. Go, sign up, and vote for whatever your little heart desires. If you actually like Leckie, or Scalzi, or ... I don't know, has Gerrold done anything in the last decade? Whatever. If you like something, vote for it. We don't have to be an organized mass, pooling together, fighting for the shot of just one good novel to slip in between the cracks of political correctness.
Of course, if you feel like it, Honor At Stake is eligible for a Dragon Award. I checked the rules.
And, surprisingly enough, there has already been someone who has suggested that Honor At Stake be under best horror. I would have taken YA or paranormal, but screw it, I'll take what I can get. And no, I do not know who Alfred Genesson is, all I know is he seemed to like my novel. I'll take it.
But the war of the Puppies -- Sad, Rabid, Kickers -- is probably over. The Sad Puppies have probably won. The Puppy Kickers, I'm certain, will declare victory for getting rid of us. Vox and the Rabid Puppies will probably have inappropriate amounts of fun watching the Hugos flail about in its death throes.
As for me? You must pardon me for right now, I must be going...
I have a DragonCon form to fill out.
Dragon eating a rocketship, maybe?
ReplyDeleteI'm on board with that
DeleteDragon eating a rocketship, maybe?
ReplyDeleteThe Dragon is such a cool name for an award.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't hard for me to vote since I don't read much modern stuff (for very obvious reasons) but I did put Honor At Stake under Fantasy for paranormal. Still, no matter what the final results, I will be interested in what will win.
Who am I kidding? I can't wait for the Mass Market Paperback of Aeronaut's Windlass to have a big DRAGON logo on front of it. That'll be the copy I pick up.
Ah, excellent. I'll take all the votes I can get.
DeleteAnd Aeronaut's Windlass and a dragon logo. BWHAAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, that would be awesome.
"We don't need to be abused, bullied, harassed or slandered online in order to find an award that's about good books. There's the Dragon."
ReplyDeleteIt will be deeply interesting to see the results of the first year's results. Due to the reasons you listed, there's cause for cautious optimism.
Whatever the outcome, the Dragon Award is likely to accomplish several useful things:
1. It will provide SF fandom with the infrastructure for a true people's choice award.
2. As such, and considering the likely size of the voter base, Dragon nominees/winners will serve as a handy control group for easy comparison against Hugo nominees/winners.
3. It will be a more accurate barometer of tastes among greater SFF fandom. Again, due to the vastly larger pool of voters, I'd be surprised if SP favorites--with a few exceptions like Jim Butcher and Larry--get on the ballot. Expect instead to see more movie and video game tie-in books, which isn't a bad thing as I see it.
Given the these three points, it's not a stretch to predict a high degree of divergence between the lists of Dragon and Hugo winners.
I was going to do a point by point reply, but you know what? I concur. Period. That was easy. :D
DeleteIn the near term, this is a positive development. But bear the following in mind:
ReplyDelete1. The Dragon Awards, like any other award scheme, will have a set of rules, a procedure for arriving at them or altering them, and a group whose responsibility it is to see that those rules are observed. That group will have power.
2. Leftists and SJWs of all varieties are attracted to power above all other things. Therefore, they will attempt to infiltrate, colonize, and suborn the group that formalizes the rules and supervises the processes.
3. Because power matters to them far more than it does to the rest of us, they will eventually succeed.
4. When the infiltration / colonization process reaches a certain depth of penetration, the colonizers will work to bend the rules in a direction that will give them disproportionate influence over what works and authors receive nominations. They might also seize the power to disqualify already-nominated works; it’s happened before.
5. Stalin’s Axiom comes into play: “It doesn’t matter who votes. It only matters who counts the votes.”
These are things that happen in any kind of organization with a formal structure. Remember Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics. There’s a reason it’s so reliable.
1. It'll depend on the group. If they narrowly define the rules and regulations, the Dragon won't get off the ground. No pun intended.
Delete2-5. I'll be interested to see them bus in enough people to impact the outcome of a con with this many people. They can dominate WorldCon because there are so few people involved in WorldCon or in the voting. DragonCon, on the other hand? I'm not sure they're that organized.
Besides, most of the people in DragonCon are armed, I think. That alone should make most SJWs wary about even looking in their general direction.
I live in Atlanta, and have watched the Dragon grow large enough to swallow everything except College Football ;-)
ReplyDeleteBut Mr. Porretto is accurate, things go from promising to WTF in time, and the time is often short. I will add that Dragoncon has worked for quite a while with the Entertainment Industry.
Mel Brooks had a point: "Hope for the best, expect the worst".
I live in Atlanta, and have watched the Dragon grow large enough to swallow everything except College Football ;-)
ReplyDeleteBut Mr. Porretto is accurate, things go from promising to WTF in time, and the time is often short. I will add that Dragoncon has worked for quite a while with the Entertainment Industry.
Mel Brooks had a point: "Hope for the best, expect the worst".
Why keep on keeping on just for this year? Because though I haven't checked...I suspect the puppy kickers are gnashing their teeth and I'm currently grinning like the cheshire wolf
ReplyDeleteHey, right now, I'll take a Hugo nomination, or an award. Just to see who goes insane in my general direction. It should be entertaining.
DeleteI'll take a nomination in Military Science Fiction please. Actually, in their FAQ, they say there is nothing wrong with authors asking their fans to nominate or vote for them. I don't have enough fans, but I see nothing wrong with Weber or Ringo getting their fans to vote for them. I also think that you don't have to attend Dragon Con to vote, and there is no voters fee like WorldCon, so they could get hundreds of thousands of voters. One more thing, Dragon announced almost seventy thousand people attending last year, but I know from people I have talked to that they actually talk down the numbers a bit so they don't have to deal with the fire marshals and such.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually surprised there's no Mil SF. It's practically owned by Baen (exaggerated, but still...)
DeleteHonor at Stake was the best vampire novel I'd read since 30 Days of Night, and that was mostly atmosphere. You made a consistent, compelling vampire, and told a story about the reflection of the soul. Knowing yourself can indeed be true horror.
ReplyDeleteAlfred Genesson is a nom de guerre of a nobody, as far as fandom is concerned. However, I need to have/keep work, and employers check internet activity. I will not remain quiet and ignore the struggle, and maybe, I can make a difference.
Wow, that's ... wow.
DeleteYeah. There's a reason I have a meme dedicated to "Wait, I have fans?"
I wonder if my upcoming novel might fit in the alternate history category for next year....
ReplyDelete