The Hugo nominations were announced this week, at which point everyone got confirmation for what we pretty much all knew — that the Rabid Puppies were going to double-down on being assholes, and that the slate voting and ballot stuffing is pretty much here to stay until there can be an official rules change. Good news — the rule change was approved last year at Worldcon, and just needs to pass at this year’s Worldcon for the adjustments to go into effect. So let’s all hope that this is the last year that pretty much all of SFF has to look at the steaming pile of defecation left on our collective front stoop by the neighborhood doucheweasel (there’s always one, people).

For a good summary of the current mishegas, or if you haven’t been following the Hugo controversy (but if that’s you, maybe you should just preserve that state of blissful ignorance), John Scalzi wrote a piece for the LA Times that covers things. The Rabid Puppy agenda seemed to have a two-prong approach (hold on, I’m avoiding a dildo joke here) this year:

• We will nominate the things you love, thereby tainting them by our association and forcing you to vote against them! Mwa ha ha ha!

Which….. is probably not going to work? I mean, The Things We Love are pretty worthy of Hugos, and probably were going to get a lot of nominations anyway, so I don’t think that’s really going to stall up many people. Stephen King and Neil Gaiman aren’t on the ballot just because the Rabid Puppies had them on the slate. Neither is a tiny little indie flick known as Star Wars. And if Andy Weir is up for a Campbell again, then that probably has more to do with how good of a book The Martian was, and given a nice assist from a certain Matt Damon-centric film.

So, let’s just call that first approach, in the immortal words of Antonin Scalia, “pure applesauce” and move on the the second approach, which was a bit more problematic.

• We will find the most offensive, asinine, or ridiculous things possible and, through slate voting, force them onto the ballot.

That worked pretty well in the categories that are always going to get fewer nominations from the community in general, and therefore are the most vulnerable to slate voting. (File 770 included a very useful list that’s color-coded for convenience.) It also resulted in some fairly weird reading when you scan down the list of nominees. The Best Related Work category in particular includes Vox Day’s “SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down The Thought Police” and Daniel Eness’s “Safe Space As Rape Room.” A large part of me wonders if one of the goals this year was just to physically punish those particularly diligent souls who make a point of reading all the nominated works before voting.

But the Best Short Story category is getting some particular attention. Here’s how it was when it appeared:

• “Asymmetrical Warfare” by S. R. Algernon (Nature, Mar 2015)
• The Commuter by Thomas A. Mays (Stealth)
• “If You Were an Award, My Love” by Juan Tabo and S. Harris (voxday.blogspot.com, Jun 2015)
• “Seven Kill Tiger” by Charles Shao (There Will Be War Volume X, Castalia House)
• Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle (Amazon Digital Services)

This was another category that was completely dominated by the Rabid Puppy slate. Which one sticks out to the eye?

Here’s a hint:

No, I’m not adding a link. Befoul your own Amazon recommendations, like I had to.

Okay, is this absolutely hilarious on some level?

Yes. Without a doubt. That this exists at all kind of makes me delighted about our species in general. I’ve seen these dino-porn covers before, and had many a merry exchange on Twitter about them. The writer (Chuck Tingle is a pseudonym) has carved out a very solid niche for themselves, and the photoshopping is fairly awesome.

But…. yeah.

As is fairly usual, N. K. Jemisin hit this one out of the park, so I’m just going to pop in her tweets (read from the bottom):

This ended up on Facebook, and someone basically responded by asking why we were all making such a fuss over a set of awards.

Listen, if the Hugos were something that a group of boozy authors organized in a con-suite, with names thrown into a hat passed around the room, then the winners announced with much fanfare and rewarded with an extra cookie and a large whiskey, then the whole thing basically forgotten, I’d be in agreement.

But that’s not what the Hugos are. A large chunk of being nominated and being a winner is the no-doubt wonderfully affirming knowledge that your work is recognized for its quality by both readers and your peers, but that’s not the end of it. Getting nominated can give an author incredible exposure and result in increased sales. There’s a reason that publishers reissue books after Hugo noms and wins so that the cover reflects the attention — it can result in many more people picking it up in a bookstore or buying it online.

Awards are not just recognition. They are also a potential means to an increased ability to earn a livelihood and have the opportunity to publish more books.

By using slate voting to give nominations to ridiculous and unqualified choices, the Rabid Puppies are keeping authors who otherwise would’ve received a nomination off of the lists. This hurts the potential exposure of these authors and also has a negative impact on their careers. This behavior is HURTING authors.

As Jemisin pointed out, the writer working under the Chuck Tingle pseudonym is well aware that they were nominated as a result of purely trolling behavior. It’s pretty safe to say that Chuck Tingle did not start writing dino-porn out of a desire to win awards and the adulation of the SFF community for the value of their plots and prose. Chuck Tingle has had enough time to absorb this news, conduct several interviews on the topic, and also release a moderately topical work on the subject.

As seen here.

What Chuck Tingle has not done is withdraw from the nomination list. Which is what’s getting a number of authors, including Jemisin, fairly annoyed. Because if Tingle withdrew, someone else would get to go on the list and be considered for an award — someone who had written a serious story and had received nominations for it — and

Admit it. It makes a lot of sense.

would’ve been on that list had a group of inveterate crybabies not decided that deliberately screwing up the Hugo nominations was even more fun than their usual plans of masturbating furiously to old Rainbow Brite episodes.

Thomas A. Mays, who wrote “The Commuter,” has already withdrawn because of the circumstances of his nomination. And I give him an endless amount of credit and admiration for that decision, which must have been extraordinarily painful, given that he had not been involved in the Rabid Puppy slate or organization in any way, and in his own words:

I did not ask to be part of any list, but I hoped at the very least that it might bring other eyes to “The Commuter”, readers that might appreciate it for what it was and perhaps honor me with an uncontroversial nomination (or at least a few Kindle purchases).  But, now that all hopes for a clean nomination are dashed, it is my turn to speak:

Rather than eat a shit sandwich, I choose to get up from the table.  

Thank you to all the people who actually read my story, enjoyed it, and nominated it for the Hugo.  I will forever be in your debt.

Mays made a very hard decision, and one that we should all give him a lot of credit for.

Tingle’s story remains nominated.

And here’s the thing —

I get where Tingle is coming from.

The Hugo nomination, for any struggling or mid-list writer, is an unbelievable gift of visibility and exposure. How many clicks has Tingle gotten as a result of this nomination? How many sales? For Tingle to refuse the nomination would be like handing him or her a golden-egg-laying goose, then demanding that he or she break the goose’s neck because ownership of the goose only came to them because of the actions of a particularly incestuous and nasty clan of kobolds three kingdoms over, who Tingle never even knew existed until this moment.

That’s a hard ask.

During last year’s Hugo shitstorm, I was in the position of explaining to my spouse exactly what was going on, and why a number of perfectly nice authors were being put in the utterly unfair position of having to refuse the Hugo nominations on their work because those nominations had come about through slate voting. At which point my spouse noted that, if I’d been put in that situation, he’d tell me that I should probably keep the nomination.

And that’s what is really at the bottom of this post for me — because if I’d been put in Mays’s position, I can’t say that I would’ve had the guts to do the right thing.

Now, firstly, that never happened. And given the rule change that is almost certainly going to be put into effect, it never would. Plus, my only eligible work would’ve been Dark Ascension, and let’s all be honest here — for a group that really hates Social Justice Warriors, Fortitude Scott might actually be the apogee of all of their hatred. Sure, Fort is white, male, and straight, so he’s got that going for him, but I deliberately constructed a vampire who I could say with a straight face was a bleeding-heart liberal (and then giggle, because that’s how I roll). Fort could actually be the Rabid Puppies poster-child for the emasculated man. (side note — I’m visualizing for just a second what it would’ve been like if I’d constructed a character that fit the apparent male ideal of the Rabid Puppies. I think my book would’ve ended in Chapter Three, when he was stabbed in the throat by Suzume. Anyway.)

But if that HAD happened?

Boundless publicity for a series that was struggling. Attention lavished on me by my publisher. New covers commissioned to advertise to all that this series had gotten a Hugo nom (maybe even a chance for a full cover redesign!). A complete rethinking by my publisher on whether to commission more books in the series, which means possibly more money for me. Perked sales, because more people would see the title and consider checking out the series, which means not just more money but, again, possibly more books. And if the rigged voting carried me through to a win? Well, anyone who followed the Hugos closely would know that my win carried an asterisk. But everyone else…. well, they’d just see “Hugo-Winning” on my bio and books.

And at the end of the day, with the publicity and sales? There would also have been an ego element. Because I DID put a lot of work into those books, and I AM proud of them. Recognition is a wonderful thing, and I would’ve undoubtedly spent a lot of time trying to argue that, no matter how it ended up on the ballet, that the book WAS of value.

I don’t think I’ll ever be put in the position of Thomas A. Mays or Chuck Tingle, but here’s what I know for sure: I can’t just say that I’d refuse the nomination, because that’s not true. I know that in that situation, I should. But I just don’t know if I could bring myself to do it.

Do I think that Chuck Tingle should refuse the nomination? Yes. Without a doubt.

Do I understand why Chuck Tingle might very well keep the nomination? Oh, yes. Without a doubt.

UPDATE: Chuck Tingle has apparently responded to the situation by publishing Space Raptor Butt Redemption. Here’s a link to a review that provides quotes and boils down the argument that Tingle makes. Personally, I think that Tingle is throwing up quite a lot of sand to obscure what is basically at the heart of why he or she is keeping this nomination and riding it all the way to the end — this is a publicity unicorn, wearing a garland of money flowers, that has just been placed on the doorstep, and it doesn’t matter that it was stolen from deserving owners by shit-gnawing kobolds three kingdoms over. That unicorn ain’t goin’ nowhere.

ALSO UPDATE: Comments are also going to have to be moderated for a while. This post has apparently garnered a bit of puppy attention, and I do not spend nearly enough time on this blog to deal with all of that.

FURTHER UPDATE: And, now the comments are turned off entirely for this post. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I see no reason why my inbox should essentially be showered in raw sewage.