Hugo Voting – Fan Writer

Now that the Hugo voter package is out, this is the first of a series of posts about how I am voting in this year’s Hugo Awards. Due to manipulation of the ballot by groups of idiots called Puppies things are a bit different this year and some people are only voting on the Puppy free shortlist. This is a totally legitimate approach but not one I am taking. If I was taking this approach, however, I would have only one person to vote for in this category: Laura Mixon. Instead, here are my votes:

1) No Award
2) Laura J Mixon – For reasons set out here.

3) Amanda S Green – Basically a stream of consciousness only tangentially related to SF that is randomly peppered with the letters SJW and GHH.
4) Cedar Sanderson – As above but with extra anti-feminism.
5) David Freer – As above (including literally published on the same blog as Sanderson) but actually insane.
6) Jeffro Johnson – No accessible contribution included in Hugo voter package and I’m not about to go and seek out Puppy work.

If you set out to find the worst fan writing available, you’d probably end up with something like this (and this pattern seems to hold true in Best Related). The Puppies think that not only is this writing not shit, it is the best published in the field in 2014. They are fucking jokers. And the biggest laugh comes from Freer’s advertorial introduction to his contribution to the package:

When I was told my name had been suggested for this I wrote – on Mad Genius Cloud – thank you, but really younger writers (not old professionals like me) needed to be considered, and would be helped by it, not me. As usual, nobody listened. Surprise. I am not their owner or master. They are adults who can make up their own mind, or not.

O bold free thinkers!

SpecFic14

As I mentioned the other day, my blog post ‘Why I Think Author Eligibility Posts Are Selfish, Destructive And Counter-Productive’ is available in Speculative Fiction 2014: The Year’s Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary, edition is edited by Renee Williams and Shaun Duke. The subtitle is pretty self-explanatory and I’m very pleased that my piece has been selected. Looking back, if I was to select my own favourite from y writing in 2014, it would be this review and this commentary (and this comment).

Foz Meadows and Foz Meadows and Mark Oshiro will be edited this year’s volume and, if you’ve read anything particularly good in 2015, nominations are open. I’ve suggested this and this so far.