Posted on 04/10/2015 2:02:51 AM PDT by Mount Athos
Last Monday afternoon, Entertainment Weekly posted a story in its Books section with the ominous headline: "Hugo Award nominations fall victim to misogynistic, racist voting campaign."
Within a few hours, the headline changed to: "Correction: Hugo Awards voting campaign sparks controversy."
Both versions of the EW story were about the annual Hugo Awards given out to science fiction and fantasy writers. In the original version, EW's Isabella Biedenharn claimed that "misogynist groups lobbied to nominate only white males for the science fiction book awards," urging their followers to "cast votes against female writers and writers of color."
Turns out that the slate of authors recommended by one of the groups, at least, did include women and minorities. Several of them, in fact.
The group's campaign, in fact, had nothing to do with women or minorities, but an effort "to get talented, worthy, deserving authors who would normally never have a chance (to be) nominated for the supposedly prestigious Hugo awards," according to Larry Correia, who along with Brad Torgersen, started the "Sad Puppies" campaign to bring more ideological diversity to the Hugo nominations.
"I started this campaign a few years ago," Correia wrote on his blog, "because I believed that the awards were politically biased and dominated by a few insider cliques. Authors who didn't belong to these groups or failed to appease them politically were shunned."
But since the EW reporter didn't bother to reach out to Correia, or anyone else involved, to check her facts, she apparently didn't know this.
This story, like the now-completely discredited Rolling Stone "campus rape" article, shows the dangers of an increasingly biased mainstream news media. Stories that fits reporters' and editors' ideological predispositions get rushed through into print with little skepticism or careful review, and apparently with no actual fact checking.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
“”I started this campaign a few years ago,” Correia wrote on his blog, “because I believed that the awards were politically biased and dominated by a few insider cliques. Authors who didn’t belong to these groups or failed to appease them politically were shunned.””
Welcome to our world.
Sad Puppies takes a bite out of “socialist realism!”
Can't these little snuggie-wearing hipsters leave anything alone?
What happened to being awarded a Hugo for good writing?
The ideological diversity they sought to bring was not only more traditional and more conservative, but also just plain good alternatives to Social Justice Warrior Monotheism. The Hugo Awards had become hostage to a very narrow viewpoint. Sad Puppies is an attempt to restore a focus on good writing rather than ideological progressive purity.
Proud to be a Sad Puppy, since Sad Puppies 1. . .
The sheep remember the first story, always.
My dad won a Hugo for a short story which appeared in “Playboy” in the mid 70’s. Great story called “The Jail”
I helped him flesh out the plot when I came home from college and asked how he wrote fiction?
Yes, he was White.
I never liked the sci-fi stories by Samuel R. Delany in the 1960s, but I didn’t find out my opinion was racist and homophobic for thirty years because all I had to go on was his name on the byline.
And it’s too bad that mean old sexist sci-fi readers never gave Hugo-award recognition to Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Anne McCaffrey in days of yore.
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