We all know about the whole Sad Puppies movement and how the Hugo awards (along with pretty much every award) have been ruined to the point where all you have to do to win an award is write some garbage and whine about men (especially white men). I still remember when I was called racist for questioning the fact that N.K. Jemison who can't seem to give any speech/interview without whining about race won the Hugo three years in a row for writing books about oppressed aliens aka thinly veiled modern day talking points. All I said was that the Hugos had become very political (I'm sure they always were to a point but not this ridiculous) and that I find it hard to believe that she could win 3 straight but not Clarke, Asimov, or Heinlein.
She also said one of the dumbest things: "when you guys (meaning white males) win it is meritocracy, but when I win, it's identity politics". I'm sure she would be the darling of the Hugo/Nebula circuit if she was a black woman who was a hardcore Trump supporter.
I was wondering if anyone has tried to make new awards for the best books? I can remember one year Orson Scott Card had the best book but he didn't win any awards. I know a lot of writers and comic book writers have gone independent which seems to be the way to go. I try to support what I can when I hear about it, but pretty much stick to older books and comic books now.
It just makes me so mad how our hobbies have been infiltrated from the inside out, and I can remember not thinking too much about it when I first started hearing calls for more diversity or the whining that there were too many white males in a hobby. I would say to anyone that if everyone has to look like you or there has to be a perfect diversity in your hobbies then find that hobby and leave ours alone. There are plenty of women and minorities who enjoy things because they actually like the hobby, but for some reasons morons like Kathleen Kennedy and people in charge at companies like Amazon don't see it.
There have been some comic book/sci-fi groups where I was the only black guy but I didn't care because I wanted to be around people who loved Sci-Fi. I think at this point it is too late to do any gatekeeping.
I do remember asking one feminist who was whining about "sexist tropes" in Wheel of Time and Song of Ice and Fire why she doesn't just read female authors and stop reading male authors since she has no interest in enjoying them but just wants to crap all over the greats of the past. She cussed me out. Still I'm glad I asked her.
Hobbies, a subcategory of culture, are just one battleground. It is the "Long March Through the Institutions".
The marxists don't care about the hobby or the corporation or Dr Seuss, it is just a means to forward their agenda. Their only objective is to subvert or destroy anything that isn't controlled by them. Their tactic is to call it racists/sexist until either they control it, or the institution is "tainted" (destroyed) so it is no longer culturally significant.
If you want to know more James Lindsey has HOURS of summarizing their literature: https://newdiscourses.com/category/audio/
His solution of doubling down on liberalism is crap but his description of the problem is on point.
I now pick hobbies that don't get infiltrated or have decentralized alternative parallel structures. The higher the physical, mental, practical, moral effort required, the less attractive it is to freeloaders.
Examples: Firearms, auto repair, ham radio, assembly language, carnivore, True Christianity, volcanoes, etc.
Science fiction and fantasy is easy for the left to invade since they live in a escapism fantasy world anyway and literature can be subjective. Realize that most of the science fiction/fantasy authors throughout the history of the genre were leftists or were accepting of LGBTBBQ and pedophiles.
So find the parallel to the mainstream. Read the authors on the right and the other authors they suggest if you require escapism. Do not give money to the "system" or those that hate you.
You are correct in that activities with a barrier to entry help keep subversives from participating. On an individual level the way to avoid a lot of the madness is to gatekeep yourself to hobbies/pursuits that don't attract parasites.
But the fight isn't within the activity itself, it is in the community surrounding the activity. The forum moderation, the professional associations, the awards committees, the standards bodies, the industry/hobby publications, etc. This is work that active individuals don't want to do because it is boring and bureaucratic, but the parasites flock to because it gives them unearned power over others.
Your options are to totally isolate yourself, or to be prepared to fight against subversion every day. It really is tiresome and the enemy relies on good people to retreat when they have had enough. The commies don't quit because they have nothing else in their lives. They are energized by spite and sadism so every petty tyranny they inflict motivates them further.
I’m more involved in my church now and read a lot of older stuff. Also started following carnivore stuff. Have you read the book Dont Give Money you People Who Hate You?
Thanks!
Women r stronk
There is:
https://www.dragoncon.org/awards/
Note: I read very few authors nowadays. Tapped the genre of most of the good works, not feeling it anymore...
I thought dragoncon had issues or are they not as bad as the Hugos? I generally don’t read or watch anything after 2014. What authors do you read?
Every con has issues. Theirs is drinking Atlanta dry.
What do you mean? What is dragoncons problem?
Every convention has its specific culture.
Worldcon attracts cliquey literary types.
San Diego Comic-Con markets directly to Josh Whedon fans and cosplay whores.
Anime Detour is for potheads, PAX (both of them) is for SJWs who think they're edgy and cool, and any con run by R.K. attracts sex pests because it's run by several.
In the case of Dragon Con, it's an 80k person convention where the average attendee is just there to buy some shit, get a photo with the 801st (assuming they aren't IN the 801st), and then get blackout drunk.
There was never a world where Dragon Con could make a literary award and make it have the weight of the Hugo, because of the character of the convention.
Thanks for the breakdown. My friend and his wife have a small business selling vintage toys and comics and I help them at small conventions in the area. Small conventions are cool. Lots of people there who are actual fans
It was more of a drawn out joke.
I've been working conventions since about '04, so I've got opinions on most of them.
Everyone calls Dashcon the worst convention ever, but my favorite train wreck of a con is still Reactor. Filing bankruptcy on your hotel and disappearing, only to change your name and re-book with the same hotel, AND THEY TAKE YOU BACK is a feat that will never be topped any time soon. You need a pretty fukkin desperate venue to pull that off, and that was definitely Purple Hotel.
Sounds like it's time for a "Reader's Choice" award that fans vote on.
No. Because awards are about trying to please the masses. To do that, you must make the nominees and the awards themselves as broad as possible to fit the taste of multiple groups. This will always include censorship.
No, the Hugos are not about the masses at all.
The only people who get a vote are Worldcon attendees.
The mistake is thinking the Hugos OR Worldcon matter. They don't. A better solution would be to start a new convention to compete with Worldcon.
The masses is a generic term. In this case, it means those who participate.
The Tolkien Society is heavily infected too. I think Social Justice is highly attractive to people who like to arrange meetings, Human Resources, logistics and such. We’ve let them run things because nobody else wanted to do it, and now we see the results.
True. I used to work in HR. I’m sure I’d be fired today for calling out the BS
yeah, because they're actually authors.
I hear that acceptance speeches now are pretty much rants. Same thing with oscars I guess
Yeah, it's been a great journey watching all the big names in sci-fi fill their books with stronk wahmen, helpless emotional men, tranny aliens with pronouns, racial sob stories and general woke fuckery. I still find gems now and then but my interest in it has waned.
Sci-Fi has always kind of been the newfangled version of the fantastical myth, really, and always an entertaining way to encapsulate a "message" in the wrappings of stuff people like. And people have always liked stories where The Elite or The Other are represented as gods, aliens, or monsters, where heroes do amazing things, and maybe a few laws of physics are broken for fun.
Yes, people also tell dumb, meaningless stories just for fun, and sometimes those survive the ages, too, and time and cultural differences can blur the ability to tell which was meant to be which.
So it shouldn't be too surprising that sci-fi/fantasy is pretty much the first target of any cultural revolution .. or what we're really seeing is the birth of a new religion, that's taking over the old myths.
See: Prisoners of Gravity
Also, keep in mind that awards shows are basically retards clapping each other on the back/circle jerking in public. Shamans and storytellers, same thing.
Yea I remember and the oscars used to have massive ratings.
Because DragonCon is about Stormtroopers and drinking.
Oh. That’s too bad. Sci Fi has such a great history. I just hate seeing what has happened to it
It has a sordid history with moments of greatness. A large percentage of authors had questionable moral character but were offset by those that didn't.
Oh yes. I’ve heard good things about Baen. They haven’t been bitten by the woke bug it seems