The Dragon Awards Results

Well the winners were announced yesterday. You can see the official announcement here:

Winners


I’ll copy the results here:
Winners

Best Science Fiction Novel
Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm by John C. Wright

Best Fantasy Novel
Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia

Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel
The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett

Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel
Hell’s Foundations Quiver by David Weber

Best Alternate History Novel
League of Dragons by Naomi Novak

Best Apocalyptic Novel
Ctrl Alt Revolt! by Nick Cole

Best Horror Novel
Souldancer by Brian Niemeier

Best Comic Book
Ms. Marvel

Best Graphic Novel
The Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series
Game of Thrones – HBO

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie
The Martian

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy PC/Console Game
Fallout 4 by Bethesda Softworks

Best Science Fiction of Fantasy Mobile Game
Fallout Shelter by Bethesda Softworks

Best Science Fiction of Fantasy Board Game
Pandemic: Legacy by ZMan Games

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Miniatures/Collectible Card/Role Playing Game
Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game (7th edition) by Chaosium Inc.

So what do I think?  Great!!!

What’s not to love?  Oh sure, I have to disagree with picking The Martian over Deadpool for best movie, but you know, it’s just the movies and movies are for kids anyway.

So good for the Dragon Con folks for finally making SF&F great again

Some people are saying that the Dragons are to the People’s Choice Awards as the Hugos are to the Oscars.  I guess that’s supposed to be a put-down of the Dragons.  But I’ll take that analogy.  Have you seen the Oscars lately?  Every movie they award and most of the movies they nominate suck

You can do a lot worse than let people pick what they like.  At least it gives you a good indication of what they’re willing to spend their money on.  And that’s good news for the winners.  When a Con that musters 60,000 participants runs an award that can really put a lot of eyeballs on the results.  And that’s especially good for the newcomers and the smaller categories.  Excellent.

Congratulations to all of them.

But of course a bonus feature of the Dragons is who hates the results.  All the familiar cast of characters.   The Puppy-kickers one and all.   But happily they’re not gloating.  They’re exhibiting all the familiar characteristics of angry SJWs.  The three laws in full effect.  Their pets didn’t win.  Fraud, ballot box stuffing, skullduggery and possibly even flimflammerry!  Larry Correia!  Vox Day!  Puppies!!!

The administrators must be questioned and found guilty of serious offenses.  Pressure must be brought to bear on them to confess their sins and cleanse the awards of its populist taint.  Special Snowflake Fairy Dust must immediately be power sprayed onto the contest so that next year the requisite number of special categories will fill the winner’s circle with socially just empowerment.  They’re not following The Narrative!  Attention must be paid!!!

Or something like that.  Anyway, bravo Dragon winners.  Well done.   All in all, a nice holiday weekend treat.

Bring on the SFFexit

Sad and Rabid Puppies in 2016, What Will the Future Hold

So last week I talked about the Hugos and Dragon Awards. And we’ll have to wait for Labor Day to see if the Dragon Award voters look more like Puppies or CHORFs. I think it’s an open question as to whether the type of readers who read the Puppy books will bother to vote for them. Sure it’s much easier to vote for something that’s free, but honestly, most normal people don’t know that sci-fi awards even exist. So, to be continued.

But what I do want to write about is the situation on the ground between the Puppies (all flavors) and the CHORFs. I won’t go back into the weeds of what it’s all about. Instead let’s talk about where it’s going. This week most of the Puppy Leaders (Larry, Brad, Sarah, Kate, Dave and of course Vox) had something and sometimes a lot to say about the 2016 awards. Here are some of the links.

Larry

http://monsterhunternation.com/2016/08/22/my-thoughts-on-the-2016-hugos/#comments

http://monsterhunternation.com/2016/08/23/aw-the-guardians-village-idiot-remembered-my-birthday/#comments

 

Brad

Survival Guide for the Conservative, Classically Liberal, & Libertarian Science Fiction & Fantasy Author

Addressing The Problem™

Sarah

The Good, The Bad, The Boring

Kate

A Puppy At WorldCon

Dave

A Wally for me!

Vox

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/post-hugo-analysis.html#comment-form

 

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-worldcon-audio.html#comment-form

 

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/why-worldcon-changed-rules.html#comment-form

 

 

I’ve read all their posts and even all the comments. I didn’t visit the CHORF sites (although several CHORF trolls were quite active on the comments sections of these puppy posts). I think I have a pretty good idea how everyone is feeling and what they want.

I think the Sad Puppies (most of them) intend to continue their policy of widening the reading and voting circle to include people who like good stories instead of just literary message fiction. By building an awareness of this alternate SFF community they are creating the core of a better fandom.

And this is truly admirable.

I think the Rabids intend to torture the CHORFs whenever and however they can. This is not only to overthrow the tyrannical regime of the SJWs, but also because they really really like doing it.

And this is truly hilarious.

The rabids are the precise remedy for the hollow pomposity and hypocritical virtue-signaling that fandom has devolved into. Rabid malice is almost a separate entity in and of itself.

Now, for the folks in the audience that think that the Rabids are the offenders I direct them to this post about David Truesdale (directly below) to get a feel for how they treat people who don’t agree with the narrative they enforce. They’re not nice or even fair.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-worldcon-audio.html#comment-form
I guess if someone looked at the dichotomy of the two puppy approaches he might compare them to the New and Old Testaments respectively. Basically the Gospel on the one hand and Samson pulling down the Philistine Temple on the other.

Based on some voting numbers that Vox put up on a post, it looks like about 2,000 of the extra voters from last year didn’t vote in the finals this year. So they didn’t renew their memberships. It seems entirely possible that next year’s awards will be even more contentious than 2016 when the best short story nominees included “Space Raptor Butt Invasion.” I don’t pretend to anticipate or even understand exactly how Vox plans to prosecute his war against the SJWs of SF but I’m almost certain that he has only just begun to torture them. He does seem to take the long view.

Those among the CHORFs that think that the worst is over because the rabid nominations were defeated in the finals do not understand what those nominations mean. For every Space Raptor Butt Invasion that wins a nomination spot, some one of the ancillary writers who faithfully vote the party ticket gets denied the promised spot on the periphery of the circle jerk. Essentially, the incentive for going along with the group-think will begin to evaporate. Before you know it, people will start reading what is actually entertaining instead of “good for you.” We can’t have that. So it’s probably going to get worse for the status quo.

It is reminiscent of some kind of ancient siege. The CHORFs are like some city totally surrounded by a horde of merciless barbarians. They have fought several skirmishes and have even sent out sorties to win the day by concentrating all their resources on offense. But their numbers and resources are dwindling and the horde seems to only get stronger and more blood-thirsty after every encounter. I can only guess at what the mentality and morale of the besieged is currently.
Pass the popcorn.

Trump Vs. The Bizarro World

So here we are at the Republican Convention. Melania Trump is plagiarizing from Michelle Obama’s boring speeches and after every floor vote by the rules committee the republican clown car ricochets off of all three circus rings. Under any other circumstance I’d be laughing at the chances of Trump being elected. But this is the Bizarro World. Every time Trump says something stupid or pompous or insane, another BLM madman kills a bunch of cops or a jihadi slaughters a crowd of people and once again makes Trump the sane choice.

Let me be perfectly clear. Bozo the Clown would probably make a more dignified President of the United States than Donald Trump. But once again, in the Bizarro World where Donald Trump is the only candidate unafraid of talking about Islamic Terrorists, Inner City Thugs or Illegal Aliens, he’s the best choice available.

And what does that tell us? I think we can break it down into a few different facts.

1) Donald Trump recognized that there were things the republicans needed to say but were afraid to. So he said them.
Republicans knew what a lot of non-progressives disliked about the democrat agenda. What they didn’t realize was what these same people disliked about republican priorities. They didn’t like the globalist agenda. That includes off-shoring jobs and on-shoring people (massive immigration whether legal or illegal). Also part of that agenda is the endless defense of the “religion of peace.” The repeating of this mantra after each horrific attack has finally turned it into a sad joke. Trump has recognized these things and they have resonated with both republicans and blue collar democrats. Despite his many obvious flaws as a candidate and a human being he was able to see these things clearly. This ability to identify what people are unhappy about is an advantage that almost completely neutralizes his otherwise enormous negatives. This is completely separate from his skills at attacking his opponents and deflecting attacks. But these do point to his realization that people are fed up with politically correct speaking rules. He is unapologetic and extremely plain spoken. The electorate likes this.

2) The Republican leaders were out of touch with what their constituency wanted.
This point is the flip-side of what Trump did right. The republicans have been trying so hard to court all of the democrat constituencies (women, young adults, blacks, hispanics, gays) that they’ve managed instead to alienate their own core constituency (adult straight white men). Without that demographic almost completely on its side republicans have a very difficult task winning elections. What they seem incapable of processing is that they won’t increase their appeal to these other groups by being a watered down version of the democrat party. You’re never going to get most hispanics voting for you without losing a larger number of core constituency voters. The democrats will always be promising more loot than the republicans.

3) The American people are divided and extremely unhappy.
The United States is no longer united. A large chunk of the population wants a nanny state where the government feeds you, houses you, tells you what to say and think and decides everything for you. The rest of us sort of still adhere to the basic idea of the Constitution. Neither Trump nor Clinton actually embrace the Constitutionalists. The best you can say about Trump is that he has pledged to recommend supreme court justices that are strict constructionists. But this is indeed a difficult period for American democracy.

Conclusion

So where does all this leave us? In my opinion, in a very bad spot. A lot of this stuff is very reminiscent of the end of the Roman Republic. The plebians and the patricians were at each other’s throats and rich demagogues were promising the mob bread and circuses for their votes. Back then they also experienced a decay of religious belief and family values. Disruptions to the economy associated with globalization obsoleted many of the comforting ways of life.

So my advice to you dear readers is embrace the bizarro! Trump is the man of the hour so hitch your wagon to his star. If he loses then Caligula (the Clintons) will have all of us crucified in January. If he wins then we’ll muddle on until something even stranger and more disastrous appears on the horizon. But either way hold on to your beliefs about what is right and wrong and pray that eventually we’ll re-emerge on the other side of the worm-hole where America is normal again. My secret hope is that Mike Pence will turn out to be stronger than his recent flip-flop on religious protection showed him and after Trump’s reign we’ll get an actual conservative in the White House. But I’m not holding my breath.