Literary Clusterfucks 2013

tbf, removing books from libraries is done by external, (mostly) right-wing forces, and the Hugos shot themselves in the foot, thigh, and sternum during the 2023 awards, based on the details that have just come out

one thing im a bit confused by with the hugo stuff—isn’t babel by rf kuang quite widely acknowledged to be terrible? everyone i know who attempted reading it basically threw it across the room, and the excerpts ive read were awful

yes but that book throwing helped people increase muscle mass

shot themselves

has tipsy been hearing about the 2024 awards since 2013 or was it something else

xpost I haven’t read the book, but it won the Nebula so apparently not everyone agreed it was terrible

Feel like I only ever hear about the Hugos because of blunders and controversies, maybe they should scrap them.

With respect, this might be a you problem, it's kept on being one of the two big awards (which is why the Sad / Rabid Puppies went after it, though they never really got very far) - if you don't follow sci-fi awards, where would you expect to hear of it?

xp also the Blackwell's book of the year for fiction (also my wife loved it)

lol my primary source on Hugos is Chuck Tingle. I don't really have an opinion about them.

Hugo winners are a good way to get new scifi reading in - well, they were on point with NK Jemisin anyway she's awesome.

Any awards that keep being given to Sean McGuire are deeply suspect awards. And they're popularly voted, so the literary equivalent of the Logies.

Hmm, except that no one knows what the Logies are

xp I am assuming you're not deadnaming Seanan McGuire there?

Just autocorrect kicking in, annoyingly

I actually wasn't aware she'd had any other name.

And the Logies thing was my point.

Logies have only been open voting for a decade or so, you used to have to spend $2.95 on the form and 37¢ on the stamp, at least

(so they were rigged by publicists instead of the public)

Any organisation’s membership giving awards, contrarily, is a completely normal and reasonable process for awards. And rarely results in a significantly more demented slate than one which has juried noms and attendee voting tbf.

(I have no opinion about the recipients of any of them in the last 8 years except that two went to a friend and those ones are, unrelatedly, good and justified. if tipsy wants to call for the awards to be scrapped bcz he has now heard of them four times, not twice, in eleven years, go ahead tho)

all awards are bad

thread winner

Historic Hugos (and Nebulas) award winners still a dece enough guide to the best in the genre for newbies.

if tipsy wants to call for the awards to be scrapped bcz he has now heard of them four times, not twice, in eleven years, go ahead tho

I dived into the whole sad puppies thing when it was going on — which ran for like five years, didn't it? — and now obviously this whole China debacle. All of which suggest — to, yes, somebody who doesn't pay much attention or attach any particular significance to the Hugos — that there are some organizational/structural issues or vulnerabilities. I don't care if it gets scrapped or not, but it looks like they're going to have some work to do to re-establish whatever credibility they had.

There are probably 50 different awards for SF writing given out yearly, but the only ones most people know of or care about are the Nebulas and the Hugos. That's why the Sad Weirdos tried to hijack the awards in the first place. It makes more sense to replace whoever was making censorship decisions in this case than to get rid of a fan voted award entirely.

all awards are bad

NY Times is leaning toward mean takedowns: Alexandra Jacobs on Anne Lamott and Ducks, Newburyport's Lucy Ellmann on Danielle Dutton.

where's the takedown of Ducks?

no the author of Ducks (Ellmann) published a much-maligned takedown of Dutton

Ducking A!

well I read that punctuation incorrectly. I thought everyone loved Ducks! (The Canadian graphic novel)

just because you can write a book doesn't mean you can review a book

^underrated REO Speedwagon album

jfc the quotes in this thread

I read the book. It is on Kindle Unlimited, which I already have a free trial of, so I didn't pay money for it. Strap in, this is going to take a while. To start with, a big chunk of the book is Sam recapping Black Like Me & other journalists who did Blackface. https://t.co/8so85Wzk7O

— Shayna 🇵🇸✡️🏳️‍🌈🏳️ @shaynaa.bsky.social (@greycoupon) June 1, 2024

"I am a visionary writer"

this dude is a fifth-tier journo who wanted to make a splash and then jumped into the ocean without knowing how to swim

"In Chicago, good writers don't take the L"

oh you're taking the L alright

he deleted all of the inflammatory shit he tweeted at the NAACP

oh my goooooooooooood

Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead," Forster concludes in the book. "Most of what's left of racism in this country are the few, socially narrow opportunities for soft interpersonal racism: shoulder racism."

Holy crap I'd heard about this book but the content is risible. Unless it is one massive troll at the left or wokism or something?

perish the thought

https://www.twitter.com/HotCommieWife/status/1796300427702485492

it reads like an extremely blunt parody of a delusional culture warrior, but also not a funny one.

Thanks to this book, I now fear picking up hitchhikers, worried they might be narcissistic white men in disguise.

— Lana Del Gay (@HotCommieWife) May 30, 2024

everything about this book sounds terrible ofc, but that tweet isn't great either

Go on, then...

That tweet is great, wtf?

This is a lazy and bad tweet

this 'clusterfuck' seems almost precision-engineered to symbiotically feed the cycle of unfunny drag his white ass twitter-voice twitter while elevating its admittedly pathetic progenitor to minor notoriety, all of it is worthless

clusterfucks of worth: that ellmann review of dutton seems pleasingly pointed. i will have to fish my copy of Ducks, Newburyport off the shelf soon

Clusterducks

The blackface book was already notorious before that tweet thread. It was just confirming that the writer was a right wing troll.

exactly, just ignore this shit. so how about that Ellmann eh? eh??

Alexandra Jacobs is a great reviewer (with both stuff she likes and stuff she doesn't) and it's good to see her get noticed on this thread

Super bleak out of Samoa - poet/academic Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard murdered by novelist Sia Fiegel:

https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/06/03/author-charged-with-murder-the-inside-story/

fucking hell :/