Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 97

New Shattered Empire novella available: Conspirators

First of all, I crossed the threshold of 2000 lifetime booksales two days ago. Hop over to the Pegasus Pulp blog for a detailed breakdown of sales channels, titles as well as musings on indie publishing and the e-book market.

What is more, I also have a new release out, namely a prequel novella to my Shattered Empire space opera series.

The prequel is set approximately six years before Mercy Mission and chronicles how and why Ethan’s father Lord Jonathan Summerton ended up collaborating with the Rebellion, a decision which will eventually cost him as well as almost his entire family their lives.

Coincidentally, after writing the prequel, I suddenly felt a lot worse about killing off the rest of the Summerton family, because they had suddenly become a lot more real to me, even though we only meet Ethan’s father and mother on the page in Conspirators.

In addition to Lord Jonathan Summerton, we also meet Rebel leader Arthur Madden as well as his impressive second-in-command Alanna Greyskull again. The character of Alanna was something of an afterthought who initially only came about, because I figured that even in the liberal atmosphere of the Rebel headquarters on Pyrs, people couldn’t just walk into the office of the Rebel leader. There had to be some kind of gatekeeper and that’s where Alanna Greyskull came in (in a deleted scene from Seedlings). Alanna eventually showed up on the published page near the end of Debts to Pay to give Carlotta a hard time. Alanna Greyskull has a much bigger role in Conspirators and we also learn a lot more about her, including how she came to join the Rebellion in the first place. I’ve become very fond of Alanna by now, since she’s a great character to write. And by the way, Alanna and Arthur Madden have really never been a couple, though they bicker like one, because Alanna doesn’t swing that way.

The space marine guy on the cover is a bit of false advertising BTW, for even though there is an action scene in the middle involving a firefight and a narrow escape from Imperial security forces (who are kind of space marine like), most of the story actually features people eating, talking and getting to know each other. However, stock art options for space opera not actually set on spaceships are rather limited. And since Conspirators features three main characters over forty, forget about finding any kind of reasonably representative images at the usual stock sites. So it came down to either a futuristic cityscape or a space marine dude. And since I already did the first for Partners in Crime, I decided to go with the second for Conspirators.

So move along, cause this book does not actually contain any Nutty Nuggets. However, if you want something a bit different from your SF…

Conspirators

Lord Jonathan Summerton, husband, father, lord of Caswallon and current head of one of the oldest families in the Empire. For too many years, he turned a blind eye to the abuses perpetrated by the Emperor and his followers. But now that his homeworld is under threat, he is no longer willing to stay silent.

Arthur Madden, miner’s son from Askvig IV turned Rebel leader turned most wanted man in the universe. He has dedicated his life to fighting the Empire and putting an end to injustice and inequality. However, in order to achieve that goal, he needs allies, including some who seem to represent everything he fights against.

Alanna Greyskull, former commander in the Imperial Navy. Court-martialled for refusing to scorch a planet full of unarmed civilians, she escaped the firing squad and wound up joining the Great Galactic Rebellion, because there was nowhere else she could go. Ever since then she has been trying to bring some semblance of organisation to the chaotic rabble that makes up the Rebellion, while plotting to make the Empire pay for what was done to her.

When these three meet in a nameless restaurant on the planet Wei Xiu II, lives are changed and history is made and the universe will never be the same…

This is a prequel novella of 24000 words or approximately 82 pages in the Shattered Empire universe, but may be read as a standalone.

More information.

Length: 24000 words

List price: 2.99 USD, EUR or 1.99 GBP

Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Scribd, Smashwords, Inktera, txtr, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, OmniLit/AllRomance e-books, Casa del Libro, Flipkart, e-Sentral, 24symbols and XinXii.

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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for May 2016

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some April books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. We have a whole lot of space opera and military science fiction this month as well as hard science fiction, paranormal romance, epic fantasy, urban fantasy, Asian inspired fantasy, young adult fantasy, horror, fairytales, werewolves, dragons, ghosts, fae, fairytale curses, dark gnomes, iceslingers, squid creatures, tentacled horrors from the deep, alien invasions, superheroes, space marines, galactic conspiracies, troubled space captains and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Kraken Island by Eric S. Brown:

Colonel Brannon Jackson’s Reapers are the toughest, deadliest, black ops squad that America has at her disposal. When the mission can’t afford to fail, the Reapers are the ones on the sharp end. A group of doomsday cultists determined to bring about the end of humanity is the Reapers’ latest target but this time even the Reapers may not be able to save the world as a prehistoric monster rises to claim the Earth’s seas as its own.

 

 

Conspirators by Cora Buhlert:

Lord Jonathan Summerton, husband, father, lord of Caswallon and current head of one of the oldest families in the Empire. For too many years, he turned a blind eye to the abuses perpetrated by the Emperor and his followers. But now that his homeworld is under threat, he is no longer willing to stay silent.

Arthur Madden, miner’s son from Askvig IV turned Rebel leader turned most wanted man in the universe. He has dedicated his life to fighting the Empire and putting an end to injustice and inequality. However, in order to achieve that goal, he needs allies, including some who seem to represent everything he fights against.

Alanna Greyskull, former commander in the Imperial Navy. Court-martialled for refusing to scorch a planet full of unarmed civilians, she escaped the firing squad and wound up joining the Great Galactic Rebellion, because there was nowhere else she could go. Ever since then she has been trying to bring some semblance of organisation to the chaotic rabble that makes up the Rebellion, while plotting to make the Empire pay for what was done to her.

When these three meet in a nameless restaurant on the planet Wei Xiu II, lives are changed and history is made and the universe will never be the same…

This is a prequel novella of 24000 words or approximately 82 pages in the Shattered Empire universe, but may be read as a standalone.

Star Nomad by Lindsay Buroker

The Alliance has toppled the tyrannical empire. It should be a time for celebration, but not for fighter pilot Captain Alisa Marchenko. After barely surviving a crash in the final battle for freedom, she’s stranded on a dustball of a planet, billions of miles from her young daughter. She has no money or resources, and there are no transports heading to Perun, her former home and the last imperial stronghold.

But she has a plan.

Steal a dilapidated and malfunctioning freighter from a junkyard full of lawless savages. Slightly suicidal, but she believes she can do it. Her plan, however, does not account for the elite cyborg soldier squatting in the freighter, intending to use it for his own purposes. As an imperial soldier, he has no love for Alliance pilots. In fact, he’s quite fond of killing them.

Alisa has more problems than she can count, but she can’t let cyborgs, savages, or ancient malfunctioning ships stand in her way. If she does, she’ll never see her daughter again.

Guilty by Association by E.A. Copen:

Everything’s bigger in Texas… Including the monsters.

When a young werewolf is murdered on the Paint Rock Supernatural Reservation, the local cops think it’s a drug deal gone bad. BSI agent Judah Black knows better. An occult expert, she knows magick is at work from the beginning. Using only her wits, knowledge of the supernatural and her limited magickal abilities, she must untangle a web of cover-ups and lies before the killer finds his next victim.

 

The First New Martians by Eric W. Deakin:

A Novel by Eric W. Deakin about how Humankind began the ascent to the stars via inner space and those who made it possible. How an old soldier, his dog and a young Aboriginal girl, with help from the Axis Engineers, changed the history of humankind forever. How more money than the collective wealth of the entire world was spent on this mission.

 

 

The Fairytale Curse by Marina Finlayson:

Most people only wake up with hangovers after parties. Seventeen-year-old Violet wakes up with frogs falling out of her mouth whenever she speaks, and her twin sister CJ’s dripping diamonds with every word. As if starting at a new high school wasn’t hellish enough, they’ve been hit with a curse straight out of a fairy tale, with not a handsome prince in sight.

Apparently Mum and Dad don’t work for the military after all, but for a secret organisation dedicated to keeping the magical denizens of the world safely locked away. These are not the harmless fairies of children’s tales, but powerful beings with a score to settle for their long years of imprisonment. Now the barriers are failing, and if Vi can’t find answers fast the world will be overrun with vengeful fairies. And then there’ll be no happily ever after for anyone.

Video Game Recruiting by Tom Germann:

Science Fiction and the Scientists lied…..

There was no golden age of discovery. No FTL or Galactic Federations. At first contact we found out how wrong we had been about the future.

Then a failed alien invasion had crushed our reborn hope.

Tim grew up a normal kid. He went to school and spent time with friends. After all ‘work hard, play hard’ is the way people live now.

All Tim had ever wanted was a nice entry level management position somewhere. Preferably in The Glentol Corporation. He didn’t know that he would become involved in something much bigger.

There have never been many successful candidates for Marine training. The requirements are high and only a few successfully complete training every year. Humanity needs every Marine it has and more.

Tim will be put into a situation where he will discover the sabotage in the recruiting program. Will he be able to expose the cause and fix it? Or will he fail and watch as the experimental video game recruiting process is shut down?

Without the Marines how will humanity survive when the aliens come back?

The First Chill of Autumn by W.R. Gingell:

Llassar is an occupied country– but nobody seems to know it.

Fae began to filter slowly into the land shortly after the birth of the crown princess, Dion ferch Alawn, supposedly fleeing a dark threat in Faery known as the Guardians. But that was fifteen years ago, and now there isn’t a town in Llassar that isn’t populated by or under the control of the fae.

Smaller, weaker, and less talented at magic, Llassarians are quickly finding out that there’s no fighting the invasion that crept in so quietly and politely. Even the castle isn’t free of fae: those closest to the king and queen are faery advisors.

When Dion ferch Alawn returns from a carefully sanitised tour of Outer Llassar, the most exciting thing she expects from the near future is the present her twin sister Aerwn promised for their seventeenth birthday.

Then her carriage breaks down, and Dion gets a taste of what the real Llassar has become: desperate, enslaved, and ripe for rebellion. Getting home safely is just the first problem she faces: the real struggle begins when Dion returns to the castle. Her new knowledge is inconvenient and unwelcome– to declare it, treason.

Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe by C. Gockel:

Sometimes intelligent life is right in front of your whiskers.

Hsissh is a member of The One. There are some newcomers to The One’s homeplanet. They call themselves “humans,” and they are, frankly, mentally deficient–they can’t warp the quantum world with their minds. However, Hsissh is becoming attached to one of them, a Miss Noa Sato.

When The One decide they will wipe out the humans and Noa’s life is on the line, Hsissh is forced to take sides … he might find intelligent life where The One least expect it.

Blackwater Val by William Gorman:

Something isn’t quite right in the Val.

Richard Franklin has left his Midwestern roots behind to live on the coast of Maine with his family. But in the autumn of the year 2000, he must return to his Illinois birthplace on a sorrowful journey. His wife Michelle has been killed in New England by a hit-and-run driver who is never found, so back home he comes with her cremated remains, to fulfill a final wish and on her birthday scatter her ashes in the park along the river in Blackwater Valley—simply Blackwater Val to locals—the small town where they both grew up and fell in love.

With him he brings his six-year-old daughter Katie who still grieves for her lost mother: Katie, who can sometimes guess who’s going to be on the phone before it rings. Who can stop all the clocks in the house, and break up clouds in the sky with her mind, and heal sicknesses, and who sometimes sees things that aren’t there . . . people who are no longer alive. All gifts she inherited from her mother.

Only something isn’t quite right in the Val.

Sinkholes are opening up, revealing the plague pits the sleepy hamlet was built over in the 1830s, when malaria and cholera outbreaks ran riot. Mysterious bird and fish die-offs begin to occur, and Katie can see ghosts of the dead gathering all around. But what she can’t see is the charred, centuries-old malevolence which has been waiting for her, and wants her for its very own. Or the pale Sallow Man who haunts the town’s nighttime streets . . . or the river witch—another Blackwater Val, of sorts—each of whom will be drawn one by one into the nightmarish bloodletting about to take place.

Iceslinger by John Hegenberger:

A deadly showdown on frozen Ganymede . . . an experiment in time travel that has unexpected results . . . the dead being brought back to life—to sell insurance . . . a legendary villain seeking to summon a strange visitor from another planet . . .

These are only some of the ventures into the fantastic and bizarre to be found in ICESLINGER, the latest collection from acclaimed author John Hegenberger. These classic tales of science fiction and fantasy are filled with action, big ideas, humor, and drama. Step into the many worlds of John Hegenberger and prepare to be entertained!

Weller Franks by R.D. Henderson:

From the author of the Nambroc Sequence, here is Weller Franks, the second novella in the Water Falcon Trilogy, his next fantasy series.

Weller Franks, a dark gnome, owes a great deal of money to a halfling crime lord named Tom Bolden who operates in the Fairy Realm.

Franks desires nothing more than getting out from underneath the thumb of Bolden, disposing of the Franks persona, and return to his old life as a smuggler on the high seas in the Earth Realm.

While Weller dreams of his old life, the gnome works as a portal operator for Portal Travel, Inc. which is a company that takes passengers and cargo from one realm to another. Traveling by portal is the only mode of travel between the realms, and Portal Travel, Inc. is the only company that provides this service.

Sometimes, Tom or one of his underlings would order Weller to smuggle, narcotics, illicit magic items, and unregistered weapons in his portal which is a crime.

Weller is not so much bothered by committing crimes when his smuggling contraband in his portal. The gnome, however, is very hot and bothered that he is not getting a larger percentage from each illicit transaction. The problem also for the gnome was the more revenue he generated for Tom did not necessarily mean the amount of money he owed the halfling is getting less.

After doing some good work for Tom, but still owing money to the halfling, Weller is told that he would be returning to the high seas and would be able to get rid of the Weller Franks persona. The gnome should be estatic and happy that his dreams become a reality, but he is not. Why is that?

Ambassador: Blue Diamond Sky by Patty Jansen:

As Cory takes a well-earned rest and finally submits to proper weapons training, he and a couple of people from his household go on a hunting trip in the marshland between Barresh and the turquoise sea. A bad storm has come through recently and on a deserted beach, Cory finds something Earthly that doesn’t belong there: a message in a bottle, a piece of paper with HELP scratched on it with a sharp object. In Isla.

Cory has a list of all humans in Barresh: it’s very short and no one is missing. A few days later, he receives a curious message through official channels, from a woman on Earth whose rich businessman husband went on a trip of a lifetime “in a place where you can surf with plesiosaurs in turquoise waves”.

Cory knows the guy advertising the trip. He’s a shady character. He also knows where the “plesiosaurs” are. They’re not particularly friendly. Not to mention that the area is on the land of a viciously territorial Pengali tribe.

As it turns out, those are the least of his worries.

A Child of the Pink Moon by Floyd Looney:

Nel is an ordinary seventeen year old, worried about her super-powers, scared that she could be drafted and the possibility of a deadly showdown with her stalker.

Nel has been in institutions most of her life, since her family gave her up when she exhibited signs of having super powers. Now there are super-powered teenagers around the world being drafted by governments for combat. While the world rushes into super-powered warfare, Nel must deal with a super-powered stalker who wants to kill her.

 

The Green Dragon by Salvador Mercer:

A thousand years ago, on the world of Claire-Agon, a war raged between men and dragons.

In Vulcrest, nearly a century before the Great Dragon War, a boy’s life was changed forever. Sheltered by a Druid of the Arnen, Elly Brown was raised in the druidic order destined to confront his childhood terror and become one of the most feared defenders in all of Agon, Elister the Druid.

Near the heart of Vulcrest’s Greenfeld Forest, the heir to the throne, Helvie, and her Paladin protector, Fist of Astor, Lucina, investigate a strange series of murders while the sinister Kesh ally with Vulcrest’s ancient enemy, the realm of Ekos in an attempt to dominate the frontier realm, laying siege to its capital, Vulkor.

Facing the destruction of her realm, Helvie must unite with an unlikely group of companions to free her homeland, but a deadly, ancient, woodland nemesis has other plans.

Helvie soon discovers that, in the world of Claire-Agon, when dealing with a Green Dragon, sometimes rules were meant to be broken.

Six Celestial Swords by T.A. Miles:

Inspired by the rising chaos in Sheng Fan, Xu Liang, mystic and officer of the Imperial Court, leaves his homeland for the barbarian outer lands in search of four magical blades to unite with two sacred weapons already in the possession of the Empire. His plan is to bring all of the blades together and return them to Sheng Fan’s Empress as a symbol of unity that will bolster the people’s faith in the Imperial family and assist against the surge of dark forces.

 

 

The Lost Pilot by T.S. Paul:

Before Athena Lee and the worlds that she knew there was an embattled Earth.

Earth was in turmoil before the first colony ship was launched. The Cyber Wars raged across the planet as country battled country. The war was fought until only the Major Powers were victorious. In the aftermath, the United Nations came into it’s own. Warriors, trained and bred to be the best the world had ever seen emerged from the shadows, bringing order and control out of the chaos of the Cyber Wars. Sam was one such warrior. Born and bred to serve he followed his orders and became one of the best pilots in the service. The future of man lay in the stars. Colonization was a good way to rid society of the undesirables of Earth. He volunteered to start a new colony and spread Earth’s power.

This is the Prequel for the Athena Lee Chronicles.

Sins of the Father by K.L. Phelps:

Kat Parker was looking forward to a nice normal night out with her boyfriend—though nothing is truly normal when you can see and talk with the dead. However, when Damian arrives with news that his estranged father has been killed, date night quickly turns into a trip to Vegas, the supernatural capital of the world. Whoever said romance was dead?

As a former detective for the Vegas Police Department, Damian is well aware of his father’s shady business dealings, but he’s still surprised when he’s confronted by an unstable squid-faced creature demanding he deliver on his father’s final deal.

With time running short and the creature’s patience running even shorter, Kat must help to figure out who killed Damian’s father and how to deliver on his final debt. Otherwise, Kat may have more to worry about than playing middleman to a postmortem family reconciliation or figuring out if her pet turtle has a gambling problem.

Falling Dusk by Jennifer R. Povey:

Anna McKenzie just wants her life back. She wants the brutal murder of her brother never to have happened. She certainly doesn’t want magic, power, and to deal with a certain vigilante named Victor Prince…

…but once the world of magic has claimed her, there is no escape.

 

 

Eons Semester by Jim Rudnick

Jilted by his Royal fiancee, captain Tanner Scott is assigned to Eons and the newly constructed RIM Naval Academy buildings and the duty is anything but a reward. His days are full of squabbling University professors and construction types all nitpicking for changes to plans and additions and extra and the boredom of detail is a horrible side-effect.

As he learns, there is more to looking after a successful construction project than being at the top of the heap and the machinations of the Issians who run Eons and it’s mind-readers comes to him for help. He knows that the Baroness is somehow also involved but the openness of the Master Adept and her Inner Circle that controls Eons is what is so surprising to him.

As the Naval Academy is finally ready to open and the heads of state of many of the RIM Confederacy planets arrive, the protesters against the Issians make their play to publicly humiliate the Inner Circle and their own plans to strengthen their ranks via the death of twins and Tanner must find a way to quell the uprising…

Fatal Blade by Eric Thomson:

Someone was setting fire to the Commonwealth Rim, nurturing a storm to drag humanity through the horrors of colonial warfare and thereby hasten the rise of Empire. Their plan had just one fatal flaw: it didn’t count on an ex-Marine pathfinder with a grudge, a dagger and a deadly partner. Zack Decker had seen enough of war to know this one had to be stopped before it turned into an all-out bloodbath, even if that meant ignoring orders and risking his mission as well as his life. After all, he was still one of the Few…

 

Hunted by Magic by Jasmine Walt:

With the sudden disappearance of Iannis, the Chief Mage, Solantha has erupted into pandemonium. Citizens are rioting in the streets, the Mages Guild is on a misguided warpath, and shifters and humans are fleeing the city in droves. Ridden with guilt, Sunaya defies the Mages Guild and goes off in search of Iannis, trekking into dangerous, uncivilized territory to try and make things right. But Sunaya’s relationship with Iannis isn’t the only thing at stake — if she doesn’t find him soon, the Resistance might just succeed in plunging the Northia Federation into a devastating and bloody civil war.

Buried Desire by A.E. Wasp:

The vengeful ghost of a murdered girl stalks the innocent. A forbidden passion ignites in the dark. Secrets of the past that doom the present rise with the dead at Eden Lake.

For Nikolai and Alexei, their jobs at Camp Nevele were supposed to be a break from real life, a last deep breath of freedom before returning to their family and the traditional marriages arranged for them. But the peace of the summer is shattered when the ghost of a brutally murdered girl begins to kill.

Even within his Romany family, Alexei has always been different. Gifted with the sight, he’s lived his life knowing something dark hunts them. A being from the otherworld unwilling to stop until it gets what it wants…and what it wants is Nikolai.

As the boys struggle to put the spirit to rest before it kills again, they find it harder and harder to deny the passion burning between them.

Despite the deep taboos of their upbringing, desire ignites between the young men and they are left with a devastating choice between holding on to each other and losing everything they’ve ever known. But the very love that binds them together may separate them forever and the choice may not be theirs to make.

Fans of the supernatural and passionate stories of first love will fall in love with the fantasy romance of Nikolai and Alexei and their desperate struggle to stay together.

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Alarm für Cobra 11 and the Lester Dent Pulp Fiction master plot

I quite like Alarm für Cobra 11, a German TV show of about two highway cops (Turkish-German cop Semir Gerkan, played by Erdogan Atalay, and a succession of partners) and their cases, that has some of the best vehicle stunts this side of a Hollywood blockbuster with a nine digit budget. In fact, I have blogged about the show before, though I drifted away when Alarm für Cobra 11 suddenly became all grimdark and depressing from season 19 on due to a new showrunner who thought he was making Breaking Bad rather than escapist fare with lots of explosions and completely ruined the mix of humor, banter and non-stop action that made Alarm für Cobra 11 what it was.

I apparently wasn’t the only one who disliked the new “adult” direction of the show, because the viewing figures fell. The production company reacted and the showrunner was sacked along with the actor who played Semir’s latest partner during the problematic seasons (though IMO the actor is not to blame for issues with the script). Meanwhile, the events of the grimdark seasons (most notably the collapse of Semir’s long and previously completely happy marriage) were retconned, never to be mentioned again.

So far I like the new direction or rather the return to the old Alarm für Cobra 11 I enjoyed. I also like Semir’s new partner Paul Renner, played by Daniel Roesner, who had previously appeared in a different role in the show (and they are different characters, even though both are young cops who idolize Semir). Some of Semir’s previous partners have tended to come across as underdeveloped (ironically Alex Brandt, who had to leave because of the falling viewing figures, was not one of them), therefore I’m pleased that we got to see Paul’s family – his father, a car mechanic with early onset dementia, and his precocious niece – in one episode.

Now Alarm für Cobra 11 has always been a formulaic show to the point that you can pretty much predict the beats. It always starts off with a few minutes of Semir and Paul in their car bantering, then there is a huge spectacular car crash on the highway that is usually tied to some kind of crime. Paul and Semir investigate, which usually leads to two smaller action scenes (often chases, sometimes also shoot-outs), until the fiery finale with yet another spectacular stunt sequence, usually but not always a massive car crash. It’s clearly a formula that works, as evidenced by what happened when the screenwriters deviated from the established formula during the grimdark interlude. What is more, the show managed to offer just enough twists and turns and variations on this formula to remain enjoyable escapist viewing.

However, while watching both the new episodes and the repeats (of a pre-grimdark-interlude episode) broadcast right thereafter, I noticed something that had never occurred to me before. Alarm für Cobra 11 is not just formulaic – no, it even follows a vry specific formula for writing popular fiction. A formula that’s older than pretty much everybody involved in the show, namely Lester Dent’s pulp fiction master plot.

Lester Dent was a prolific pulp author, best remembered today as the creator and writer of Doc Savage. If Doc Savage had been all he wrote, Lester Dent’s influence on popular culture would still have been assured, for not just is Doc Savage a.k.a. the Man of Bronze often considered to be one of the main inspirations behind Superman – no, Doc’s aides, five highly accomplished (and constantly bickering) specialists plus two pets plus Doc’s impressive cousin Pat, are the direct forerunners of the supporting teams/casts of pretty much every pop culture hero these days. You can see the influence of Doc Savage and his fabulous five (six, if you include Pat) in anything from The A-Team via Buffy via any number of CSI/NCIS variations via Torchwood via Castle to modern superhero movies/TV shows (it’s particularly notable in DC’s TV shows, where Arrow/Flash/Supergirl all have their own support teams).

However, in addition to creating Doc Savage and his pals, Lester Dent also came up with a plot template for a 6000 word pulp short story that is supposed to work for any genre. The entire thing, which apparently started life as an article in a writers’ magazine in 1939, may be found here, while Michael Moorcock’s application of Lester Dent’s formula may be found here. It’s well worth reading, even if you’re not a writer or a writer who doesn’t much like formulas.

To sum it up, Lester Dent advises writers to divide a story into four parts with increasingly escalating stakes and end every part with a revelation/reversal that sends the story off into a new direction. Dent also advises writers to introduce every character, plot point or theme that will eventually contribute to the resolution early on and reminds them to be original by having a different murder method, a different setting or a different treasure for the villains to be after. In short, Lester Dent’s pulp fiction master plot boils down to advice that makes sense even if you don’t actually want to follow his template.

Now let’s see how Lester Dent’s pulp fiction master plot applies to Alarm für Cobra 11. If you want to take a look at the show, a whole bunch of episodes both past and present are available for free online here. Avoid season 19 and 20, those are the grimdark seasons. Come to think of it, the grimdark episodes start halfway through season 18, when Semir’s old partner André returns from the dead to be revealed as a villain and Semir breaks up with his wife.

As I’ve said above, every episode of Alarm für Cobra 11 can be divided into four parts, which map quite neatly onto the four parts of Lester Dent’s pulp fiction master plot. Every one of those four parts/acts is punctuated by an action sequence, since spectacular stunts are the show’s raison d’etre, and also ends with a revelation that sends the plot off into a new direction. So far, pure Dent.

Establishing all important characters, plot points and themes early on, preferably in the first third, is pretty much standard for popular television of any kind these days and Alarm für Cobra 11 mostly hits that requirement, though I recently saw one episode which switched to a different villain (boss of the initial villain) towards the end.

The writers of Alarm für Cobra 11 also take care to serve up the various different things Lester Dent suggested. Different locales are difficult to do within the framework of show, first of all because of filming limitations and secondly because for a show focussed on two highway cops, it’s clear that a big chunk of it will take place on or near highways. The murder methods vary, though a lot of the episodes involve victims getting shot, stabbed, poisoned or dying in car crashes (well, it is a show about highway cops, remember, so car crashes feature prominently), frequently after having been shot or stabbed. Though the show also has a thing for apocalyptic terrorist plots involving poison gas, dirty bombs or botulinum toxin in the water supply, which is also when the show venture into SF territory.

However, the “different” on which Alarm für Cobra 11 places a big focus is the “different treasure for the villains to be after”. In the episodes (both new and repeats) broadcast during the most recent run, the treasures the villains were after included a rare vintage car which turned out to be used for smuggling, a supply of botox (for poisoning the water supply), nuclear waste (for building a dirty bomb), stolen and smuggled Syrian antiques, a contested piece of real estate, stolen high tech weaponry, babies kidnapped for human trafficking, mysteriously vanishing ransom money as well as the more common drugs, diamonds and money. And even the most recent new episode where the prize was indeed money put something of a twist on it, since the villains were looking to steal money from a government depot where it’s stored for cases of war and other national emergencies.

So Lester Dent’s lessons on writing pulp fiction stories are still put to good use almost eighty years after he first wrote them down to keep a rather formulaic TV show fresh after twenty years on the air. Another thing that helps to keep Alarm für Cobra 11 fresh is that several episodes of the most recent run focus less on the two leads (and for the new episodes, it’s notable that we don’t know a whole lot about Paul yet), but on supporting characters like forensics specialist Hartmut, junior police officer Jenny, veteran highway cop Bonrath (who was given a touching romance with former 1980s sexpot Sonja Kirchberger in a recent episode) and Kim Krüger, Semir’s and Paul’s (and in earlier episodes Ben’s) long suffering boss.

The Lester Dent pulp fiction master plot – still effective after almost eighty years.

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Cora guest-blogs elsewhere – and some thoughts on dialogue as characterisation

First of all, I have a guest post in the “Nobody Knew She Was There” series about female SFF writers over on Sarah Ash’s blog today. I talk about the challenges of being a woman from a non-anglophone country who writes SFF, so head over there and check out it.

And also read some of the other great posts in the series by writers such as Kari Sperring, Juliet E. McKenna, Stephanie Burgis, Jessica Rydill, Freda Warrington, Jenny Barber, Jan Edwards and others, while you’re at it.

In other news, today I came across this Storify of a Tweetstorm (i.e. a whole lot of Tweets) by Chuck Wendig about writing dialogue, which resonated with me a whole lot.

Now anybody who has ever read any of my stories probably knows that I write a lot of dialogue. For example, the Helen Shepherd Mysteries are about eighty percent dialogue, since Helen solves her cases primarily by talking to witnesses, suspects and of course the members of her own team. Yes, there are all sorts of clues and red herrings, but even those are usually presented in dialogue.

The late Jay Lake once said that all writers begin with different skill sets, aspects of writing they are naturally good at (basically what came in the box) and others they need more time to learn. For me, dialogue was something I was really good at from my very first attempts at writing on. I’m not sure why, though I suspect having spent years holding conversations with imaginary characters and sometimes writing them down helped a lot. Cause by the time I started writing in earnest, I had already spent a lot of time practicing how to write dialogue.

There is a school of thought that believes that any “fluff” in a story should be cut. And any dialogue that does not directly impact the plot is often considered “fluff” and gets cut, often leading to very formulaic stories.

As I wrote back in 2013:

And indeed the fact that we can no longer have any fluff is one of the reasons why TV shows are so damned predictable these days. Because every line, every single word has to serve a purpose, you automatically know that the throwaway line of the police chief about a wave of burglaries on XXX Street or the prison guard’s phone call to his wife in the background will inevitably turn out to be a vital clue to solving the case. Because in a modern crime drama, there never are any throwaway lines anymore. No one ever has a conversation that does not directly pertain to the plot. Fluff must be cut, everything must serve a purpose. Coincidentally, this is also why so many works these days fail the Bechdel test. Because any character and any sort of conversation that has no direct impact on the plot is cut.

Now Chuck Wendig does come out against throwaway lines and agrees that dialogue should move the story forward (so do I BTW). But there is more than one way of moving a story forward. And even dialogue that doesn’t do much to progress the plot can still reveal a whole lot about the characters and their relationship to each other. And it’s these character moments that are often lost when cutting all the fluff and the chit chat.

When Helen Shepherd interviews a witness and/or suspect, Helen and through her the reader not only learns facts as what did the witness/suspect see and do they have an alibi, but she and the reader also learns a lot about what sort of people these characters are and what their relationship is to the victim and to each other. Indeed, in an upcoming Helen Shepherd Mystery called Chamber Play, I have the stereotypical “all the suspects gathered in one room” scene so beloved of traditional and cozy mystery writers. And once I started writing that scene, I also realised why they are so popular to the point of cliché. Because the various suspects immediately started arguing and accusing each other so that Helen didn’t even have to ask any questions, she only had to listen. It was like magic.

In fact, most of my stories – and I go into that in my guest post over at Sarah Ash’s blog as well, since that’s not how “real” SFF writers are supposed to write – start with a character or two. I put these characters together, let them talk and see what happens. New York City’s Finest started out this way. I used a prompt from the They Fight Crime generator (which is awesome for these things), put Detective Ray McCormick into Jo’s taxi and let them talk. And lo and behold, this little conversation blossomed into a novelette with series potential (I’ll revisit Jo and Ray eventually, since I really like them).

Of course, it helps that plot is another thing for me that “came in the box” to quote the late and much missed Jay Lake. I’ve always been good at telling stories – probably due to consuming a whole lot of them – to the point that I even imposed a plot and dialogue on plotless vignettes I was supposed to write for creative writing class, since vignettes with lots of evocative description is one of the things I did not get in the box, but a skill I had to acquire. So when I put two character together in a room and let them talk, they usually generate a plot.

Though there are also exceptions. History Lesson, part 3 in the Shattered Empire series, basically has no external plot. All that happens is that Holly and Ethan sit in a room, get drunk, eat mint candies and talk. And indeed the fact that I write a lot of food scenes is largely due to the fact that I write a lot of dialogue, because eating and drinking are ideal for breaking up dialogue. Just take care not to give your characters alcohol poisoning by accident.

Now all Shattered Empire stories are dialogue heavy, but History Lesson really takes the crown here, because it’s almost all dialogue – for 13000 words. However, I have never had a single complaint about that story – even though nothing external happens – because all that dialogue serves a purpose and we learn a whole lot about Ethan and Holly (and a bit about Carlotta who shows up near the end), about the illustrious Summerton family and about the universe they live in, including the history of the Fifth Human Empire as narrated by Ethan (which bears some uncanny similarities to the history of postwar (West) Germany and I’m still waiting for someone to call me out on that). The upcoming Shattered Empire prequel novella Conspirators is mostly dialogue as well – with a fight scene against blaster-toting robot waiters in the middle.

To quote Chuck Wendig again:

And really, plot is character. Unless you're writing about natural disasters, plots happen because characters make and act on decisions.

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) May 12, 2016

Plot is what results from the push-and-pull of characters (and their words, actions, and agendas) operating with and against one another.

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) May 12, 2016

I'll say only this one more thing: plot is best when it follows characters, not when characters follow it. Dialogue is part of this.

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) May 12, 2016

I completely agree. When you let the characters follow the plot, you get those weirdly formulaic TV crime dramas, where sometimes even established characters are distorted just to make the plot work. So I vastly prefer just letting the characters take the lead – never mind that mine tend to balk when I try to make them do something they don’t want to. And dialogue is of course excellent for revealing character.

I’ll finish with talking about a new project I’m working on, also a space opera with a strong romance subplot, but not set in the Shattered Empire universe, because it wouldn’t have worked. Now space opera is a very action-oriented subgenre – particularly the Nutty Nuggets fraction wants its manly space marines doing manly things in space and heaven help an author, if there’s too much talk or introspection or – gasp – romance. Don’t you know that you’ll never get in the Amazon top 100, if you write that sort of thing?

Now the protagonists of the upcoming series are two soldiers, which should assure plenty of Nutty Nuggetty action. Only that these soldiers don’t meet on the battlefield, but while on leave on a tropical pleasure planet, i.e. not exactly the most action-packed environment. And yes, there is action. There is a fight and there will eventually be a second one, once I get around to writing it. There is also an interlude, where our heroes go sailing and get caught in a storm. But most of story – and I suspect it will be around 60000 to 70000 words when done, i.e. short novel length – the protagonists eat, drink, dance and talk a lot. They talk and get to know each other and are heavily attracted to each other, which is going to be a problem, because one of them is not what they claim to be. And indeed this is why I deliberately went for so much dialogue – or rather overrode my own objections of “You can’t do this. No one will want to read it.” – because I want the reader to get to know these characters and eventually fall in love with them, just as they fall for each other. Because that will make the inevitable betrayal at the end hurt so much more.

Meanwhile, in the sequel – and since the first book will end on something of a cliffhanger, there needs to be a sequel – there’ll be some action in the form of interrogations, escape attempts, fights and even a space battle. But again, a lot of the story will involve the protagonists talking (and mean author that I am, I of course dump them in a situation where they have a lot of time to talk), gradually getting to know each other again and trying to figure out how much of their previous encounter was lie and how much was truth. What is more, one of the protagonists has some massive atonements to make, while both have to do some soulsearching.

Will this appeal to the Nutty Nuggets crowd? Probably not. But as I said over at Sarah Ash’s blog, I can only tell my own stories, not somebody else’s. And my stories tend to have a lot of dialogue.

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The 2015 Nebula Awards, the Bram Stoker Awards, the Eurovision Song Contest… and a bit about football

So the Eurovision Song Contest was last night. I was watching something else and occasionally switched over, only to decide that I really could not bring myself to care. I finally tuned for the voting only to realise that a) they had changed the voting system and announced first the jury votes in the regular way and then the collated televoting results. Personally, I prefer the old system. Okay, so they apparently wanted to defuse the political nature of the televoting results, but it’s not as if the jury votes aren’t political or as if the whole thing isn’t political in general.

Case in point: Germany finished last for the second time in a row. And unlike last year, where the German song did not even have a whole lot of backing in Germany itself, this year’s entry – “Ghost”, sung by 18-year-old Jamie-Lee – had a lot of popular support. Jamie-Lee was the runaway winner of the German primaries and she’d previously won the German edition of The Voice. I don’t think anybody really expected her to win Eurovision, but everybody expected her to at least place decently.

Okay, so she did have a weird manga-inspired outfit, but there were plenty of equally weird outfits (e.g. the Croatian tree dress, the Polish ringmaster vampire or the Armenian reject from the Black Widow program), so that a girl who looks like a cosplayer at an Anime con doesn’t really stick out all that much. I have heard from some older viewers that they had problems with Jamie-Lee’s outfit (i.e. they didn’t understand it, because they have no idea what mangas or anime are), but these were inevitably the sort of people who also hated the fact that she sang in English like eighty percent of the contestants. And the monolingual defenders of the German language don’t matter and never did.

One potentially problematic aspect is that Jamie-Lee is a white German teenager appropriating Asian culture, but considering we’ve seen all sorts of blatant cultural appropriation at the Eurovision Song Contest before, I doubt that was the deciding factor.

So if there was nothing wrong with the song and the singer, the obvious answer is that bad result for the German entry was due to political reasons. Because apparently, the rest of Europe hates us because of we insist on responsible fiscal policies or because we take our responsibility to help the refugees displaced by other people’s wars seriously, unlike certain other countries, or because they hate Angela Merkel, the best chancellor we’ve had in decades, or because… well, honestly, I no longer care. By this point, I think the German broadcaster ARD should simply get out of both the Song Contest and the European Broadcast Union altogether. Because I don’t see why we should have to pay for the privilege of having 18-year-old girls publicly humiliated. I’m not the only one who thinks so either, here is an article which compiles a bunch of confused and angry social media reactions.

Ukraine won by the way with a singer called Jamala performing a song called “1944” about the expulsion of the Crimean Tartars under Joseph Stalin. Okay, so it wasn’t an okay song and clearly heartfelt, especially since singer Jamala drew on her own family history. But don’t believe for a minute that this wasn’t a political vote, especially since Australia was leading after the jury voting (and IMO had the better song). And of course, Russia is thoroughly pissed off (even though their televoters gave Jamala ten points), especially since their contestant only landed in third place, and are threatening to boycott the contest next year. Meanwhile, in the rest of Europe the reaction is, “Yes, please, do, cause we’re kind of tired of your blatant campaigning for a win.”

In better news, Werder Bremen will remain in the first German league after a last minute win against Frankfurt.

Also in better news, the winners of the 2015 Nebula Awards were announced tonight and they look very good.

“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong, winner in the short story category, and Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, winner in the novella category, are both very fine stories. Binti was on my Hugo nomination list, while “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” made my personal longlist. I haven’t read “Our Lady of the Open Road” by Sarah Pinsker, the winner in the novelette category, because it’s not available online as far as I know, but I know that the story has gotten a lot of positive reactions. Correction: I just checked and “Our Lady of the Open Road” is available online here, if you want to read it.

ETA: Here is Alyssa Wong’s acceptance speech, courtesy of her blog.

I haven’t read Updraft by Fran Wilde, winner in YA category, yet, though I’ve heard a lot of good things. As for Uprooted by Naomi Novik, winner in the best novel category, so far I haven’t been overly interested in the book for the reasons outlined here (short version, contains too many “Not my things”), but it’s a novel that has gotten a lot of buzz and is clearly a worthy winner, even though Brandon Kempner of Chaos Horizons and Ceridwen Christensen of the Barnes & Noble blog both predicted that The Fifth Season would win. And who knows, once the Hugo voters’ packet goes online, I may well realise that Uprooted is my thing after all.

That leaves Mad Max: Fury Road in the best damatic presentation category, another worthy winner, which – let’s not forget – was also the big winner at the Oscars this year. Rounding out the 2015 Nebulas, C.J. Cherryh was deserved named SFWA Grandmaster and the two special awards went to the late Sir Terry Pratchett and Lawrence M. Schoen respectively.

So all in all, some very fine winners at the 2015 Nebula Awards, even if not every winner would have been my first choice in the respective category. There is a discussion of the winners in the comments at File 770 BTW. Comparing the Nebula winners with the 2016 Hugo shortlist, you’ll notice that the winners are fairly well represented with Uprooted, Binti and Mad Max: Fury Road all nominated in the respective categories and Alyssa Wong, author of “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers”, nominated for the John W. Campbell Award. The only Nebula winners conspicuously absent from the Hugo shortlist are Updraft, which isn’t that much of a surprise, since the Hugos don’t have a YA category and YA usually has a hard time getting nominated in the regular categories, and “Our Lady of the Open Road”, which may well have been a casualty of canine interference.

Both Joel Cunningham at the Barnes & Noble blog and Andrew Liptak at io9 also point out that the winners of the 2015 Nebula Awards are all women with the sole exception of the dramatic presentation category, in which a movie which featured a plethora of well-drawn and interesting female characters won, even though the nominal protagonist was a man as were the director and writer.

What is more, two of the 2015 Nebula Award winners are women of colour and two of the winning stories feature queer characters and were written by queer authors, at least according to Andrew Liptak. Add in that the Grandmaster Award also went to a woman, the great C.J. Cherryh, and the 2015 Nebulas are a triumph of diversity and a reflection of the changing demographics of the SFF genre. And given the controversy that has been engulfing the Hugo Awards these past three years, this is a very encouraging sign. Yes, the Hugo Awards may be besieged by reactionaries, but they don’t speak for the rest of us.

Talking of which, I was curious and checked out some puppy-affiliated blogs for reactions, since I suspect that whining canines are not exactly happy with this year’s Nebula Award decisions. Most are conspicuously quiet, though Brad Torgersen, spokesperson of last year’s Sad Puppy campaign, laments that Mad Max: Fury Road won over his personal favourite The Martian, which he views as yet another sign of the decline of the genre.

Now I get that Brad Torgersen really, really loved The Martian, ironically for the same reasons that I don’t care for it (the movie was okay, largely due to the excellent actors, but the book was just dull), namely that it feels like a throwback to the 1950s/early 1960s. Now Mad Max: Fury Road is a throwback itself, namely a continuation of a franchise from the 1980s and a return to the trendy punk post-apocalyptica of the time. But Mad Max: Fury Road – which I initially filed under “sequel no one asked for” when it was announced – managed to update its narrative for the 2010s, while The Martian still feels very much like a 1950s/early 1960s work, even though the cast of both book and movie is a lot more diverse than it would have been back then and the special effects are a lot better as well.

As for why Mad Max: Fury Road winning over The Martian is a sign of the decline of the genre, Torgersen points out that The Martian features a positive future you would want to live in (unless you’re Mark Watney stuck on Mars, I suppose), while no one in his right mind would want to live in the world of any of the Mad Max movies. He’s actually right on that point, but it’s still the Ray Bradbury Award for best dramatic presentation and not the award for the best future world to live in. He also points out that The Martian made a lot more money at the box office than Mad Max: Fury Road, which in the “earnings are everything” world of the Sad Puppies must mean that it’s the better movie. But if the Nebula were awarded according to earnings than The Force Awakens should have won, because it outgrossed everything else on the shortlist. Never mind that Mad Max: Fury Road had the misfortune of being released sandwiched between two huge blockbusters in a crowded summer, while The Martian was released in a much less crowded environment. Plus, The Martian was very much marketed at a general audience, whereas Mad Max: Fury Road was clearly aimed at genre viewers. Coincidentally, my personal favourite in the best dramatic presentation category would have been a tie between The Force Awakens and Jessica Jones (haven’t seen Ex Machina yet and don’t care for Pixar’s stuff at all), though I’m perfectly happy with Mad Max: Fury Road as well.

As for the swipes against humanities graduates ruining the genre, because they don’t understand science, can we please just stop it? An author’s educational and professional background does not say anything about the quality of their work. There is an odd insistence in parts of the SFF sphere that “real scientists”, “real engineers” and “real soldiers” (if we’re talking about military SF) make better SFF writers because of their background. This is of course bullshit, because a) there is such a thing as research (just ask Andy Weir), b) having a humanities degree (or indeed no university degree at all) does not necessarily mean that you don’t understand science and c) it’s fiction, i.e. it’s all made up anyway. We don’t insist that mystery writers should be police officers or criminals, that historical fiction writers should be historians or that romance writers should be relationship counsellors or at least happily married. Fantasy writers usually aren’t knights, wizards or demon slayers in real life either. So why the hell is an author’s day job so important in science fiction?

While on the subjects of awards, the HWA also announced the winners of the 2015 Bram Stoker Awards yesterday. Now I’m not all that familiar with the winners, since horror isn’t really my genre, though Andrew Liptak gave the winner in the best novel category, A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, an excellent review at io9. I’ve also heard praise for Mr. Suicide by Nicole Cushing, winner in the first novel category, and the movie It Follows, winner in the screenply category. What is more, we featured Mercedes M. Yardley, winner in the long fiction category, over at the Speculative Fiction Showcase (though with a different title), where we also featured several works published by Crystal Lake Publishing, who published the winner in the poetry category.

Finally, the winners of the Bram Stoker Awards also have a good gender balance, particularly considering that horror is even more male dominated than science fiction.

So in short, yesterday saw some excellent works win awards and Werder Bremen stay in the Bundesliga. Pity about Eurovision.

Comments are closed, because SFF awards discussion generally brings out the trolls and Eurovision fans can be nasty as well. Ditto for disgruntled football fans.

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New Story Available: The Death of the American Dream

I have a new release to announce. It’s called The Death of the American Dream and it’s basically Mad Men meets the apocalypse, complete with giant mutant crabs and other monsters.

This is another story that was inspired by a piece of SFF artwork, in this case a painting called “Fatigue” by artist John Brosio. Brosio also has another painting called “Fatigue”, which came up during an image search and promptly influenced the story as well. In general, I like using images – often SFF art – for inspiration and have a whole folder full of intriguing images for that purpose. Occasionally, when I’m blocked and looking for inspiration I go through that folder, pick an image and start writing about it.

And since I was watching the final season of Mad Men, while I was writing The Death of the American Dream, the show combined itself with the nascent story.

You can find the result below. I hope you like it.

The Death of the American Dream

They came out of nowhere to attack America’s towns and suburbs: Giant mutant crabs and other creatures, grown to enormous size due to nuclear radiation and bent on destroying the American way of life. But while many fall to the monster attacks, an advertising executive finds the unexpected strength to survive and fight back for the sake of his family…

This is a short story of 5300 words or approximately 20 print pages.

 

 

More information.

Length: 5300 words

List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP

Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Scribd, Smashwords, Inktera, txtr, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, OmniLit/AllRomance e-books, Casa del Libro, Flipkart, e-Sentral, 24symbols and XinXii.

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And even more Hugo links – and the Locus Awards

The 2016 Hugo debate is still going on, which isn’t surprising, since last year it lasted all the way until the winners were announced in August, whereupon it morphed into a debate of the winning works. What is more, we’re having a debate about the Locus Awards as well.

For my own contributions so far, see this post, this post and this post. For even more Hugo links, including links to Puppy spaces, also check out File 770.

For starters, the 2016 Hugo Ballot has been updated with the replacements for the two dropped out finalists, the short story “The Commuter” by Thomas A. Mays and the fanzine Black Gate. The new Hugo finalists are “Cat Pictures, Please” by Naomi Kritzer in the short story category and Lady Business in the fanzine category. Both are excellent choices IMO and were also on my own nomination ballot (so was Black Gate which dropped out BTW).

The ladies of Lady Business react to their Hugo nomination and also offer links to several 2015 posts of note, while Naomi Kritzer has placed two of her short story collections on sale to celebrate.

George R.R. Martin briefly weighs in on the new finalists (since he isn’t familiar with either of them) and also wonders what this will mean for the Alfies this year, because George R.R. Martin apparently believed that the short story and fanzine categories, which were entirely rabid puppy dominated until the withdrawals, might be No Awarded and might require Alfies.

Personally, I’m pretty sure that best fanzine would not have gone to “No Award”, since pretty much everybody respects File 770 and the great work Mike Glyer is doing there. And pre-withdrawal, Black Gate was also a reasonable choice with a wider appeal that might well have beaten “No Award”, even though they have the misfortune that Vox Day really likes them.

Talking of Black Gate, Rich Horton goes a bit deeper into the decision of Black Gate editor John O’Neill to withdraw and also wonders what to do now and how to vote. Personally, I like Black Gate a lot and hope that they will get a Hugo nomination free of puppy taint on day.

Short story, on the other hand, might well have fallen to “No Award”, because the only semi-reasonable nominee on the ballot is “Asymmetrical Warfare” by S.R. Algernon, which is an okay story, though it did not get a lot of buzz outside puppy circles. And being a pretty good story didn’t help “Totaled” by Kary English last year to overcome the puppy taint. “Cat Pictures, Please”, on the other hand, got a lot of buzz and is a lovely story, so it’s good to have a real contender in the short story category.

Of course, there is also the big dark horse (or unicorn) in the short story category, Chuck Tingle’s Space Raptor Butt Invasion. Now when the Hugo shortlist was announced two weeks ago, Space Raptor Butt Invasion looked like the least likely winners in the short story category (except maybe for the execrable “If you were an award, my love” that is), simply because it was not just a clear troll nomination, but is also a work of erotica, where the SFnal content is largely incidental, i.e. it belongs to a completely different genre.

But in the two weeks since the Hugo finalists were announced, Chuck Tingle has impressed a lot of people with his hilarious way of dealing with the situation into which he found himself thrust (no pun intended). In the past two weeks, Chuck Tingle has also been relentlessly trolling Voxman, as he calls him, and his Devilmen, culminating in the announcement that Tingle had asked “true Buckaroo” and Gamergate bête noire Zoe Quinn to accept the Hugo Award on his behalf, should he win it. And just in case there were any doubts where Tingle’s sympathies lie, his latest release is also a take on the absurd transphobic bathroom law in North Carolina on his own inimitable way. I guess the “Voxman” shot himself in the foot (or pounded himself in the butt) by getting Chuck Tingle nominated.

So far, Chuck Tingle has brought some much needed amusement to this year’s depressing Hugo season, repeat of the past two equally depressing Hugo seasons, and I’d really like to see him, whoever he may be, honoured for that in some way, though not necessarily with a best short story Hugo, since it’s still the Hugo Award for the best short story (and I doubt that Space Raptor Butt Invasion is better than “Cat Pictures, Please” or even “Asymmetrical Warfare”) and not the most amusing author. Though Chuck Tingle would make an excellent recepient for an Alfie Award IMO.

Talking about jokes and parodies, Rachel Swirsky, whose 2013 short story “If you were a dinosaur, my love” still has the various puppies so infuriated three years later that they keep citing it as the proof that the Hugos are broken (even though it didn’t win), has announced that she will write a parody of her story entitled “If you were a butt, my butt” and will donate the proceeds to charity.

But enough about Chuck Tingle, let’s hear something about the other 2016 Hugo nominees. I already posted this in an ETA to my previous post, but I’ll repost it here for those who missed it. Cause two more Hugo nominees who were slated/listed by the puppies without their knowledge have weighed in.

Brooke Bolander whose novelette “And You Shall Know Her By the Trail of Dead” was on the sad puppy recommendation list explains in a strongly worded post why she will not withdraw and also points out that the sad puppies were pretty much irrelevant this year, pwnd by the rabids. I enjoyed “And You Shall Know Her By the Trail of Dead” a whole lot and nominated it as well, which is why I’m glad Brooke Bolander is staying in.

Daniel Polansky whose novella The Builders has the misfortune on landing on both the sad and rabid slates explains that he initially planned to withdraw, but decided not to and that he really wants nothing to do with the whole thing. I haven’t read the novella yet, but I’m pretty sure that Daniel Polansky is another unwitting puppy shield who was dragged into this whole mess against his will.

Shamus Young, Hugo finalist in the best fan writer category, who was also on the rabid puppies slate, declares himself unpolitical in this post on the site of the podcast Diecast. Shamus Young is one of those Hugo nominees where I have no idea how to evaluate their work, since he mostly seems to write and podcast about videogames, which just isn’t my thing. Though at least according to this Hugo reaction post at the Kaedrin Weblog,  Shamus Young seems to be a generally popular writer in the videogame world and may therefore well have been another of Vox Day’s human shields.

At io9, Andrew Liptak profiles another 2016 Hugo nominee, Matthew Callahan, who was nominated in the best fan artist category for his photos of Stormtroopers at war. Matthew Callahan is another Hugo nominee who had the misfortune of finding himself on the rabid puppy slate (and on the sad puppies list as well, I think). It’s pretty obvious why the puppies would enjoy his work – military subjects are very much their thing. Nonetheless, he does interesting work and is certainly a nominee I can see myself voting for, unlike that other rabid puppy fan artist nominee who caused a minor uproar over a badly drawn and naked Ms. Marvel.

Let’s go on to some general reaction posts. At Conceptual Neighbourhood, Katster points out that they understand how some of the Sad Puppy leaders like Larry Correia or Brad Torgersen are feeling, because being snubbed or ignored for awards does hurt. Though one has to remember that both Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen got Hugo/Campbell nominations under their own steam prior to engaging in any puppy shenangigans. Okay, so they didn’t win (and at least Larry Correia’s work really isn’t the sort of thing that Hugo voters normally go for, though the story Brad Torgersen was initially nominated for was much closer to the sort of short fiction that appeals to Hugo voters than some of his latter work), but then a lot of worthy writers don’t win and aren’t even nominated for awards in the first place.

At Geek Out, a site for LGBT geeks, Hey Mr. Tullyman offers a summary of the Hugo controversy and points out that hatred, particularly hatred of queers, is hurting the Hugos. He doesn’t seem to be entirely sure how the Hugos actually work, e.g. they’re are no judges, only Worldcon member who vote, but his heart is certainly in the right place.

Of course, the genre community is also still debating how to prevent a repeat performance of the puppy mess of the last three years into infinity or at least until Vox Day gets bored.

At his livejournal, Kevin Standalee has another interesting proposal which he calls Plus 2, which would give the Hugo Awards committee the ability to add up to two nominees to the ballot in any category, which would allow non-slate nominees to get even into categories which were completely swept by the slates.

Finnish fan Sami Sundell also weighs in on the Hugo controversy at his English language blog Asian laita. He also comes out very strongly against the approach to blanket “No Award” anything that was on any slate, whether sad or rabid puppies, regardless of individual merit that is being pushed by Matthew Foster and Steve Davidson among others. I’m inclined to agree with him and indeed I’ll follow the approach that has served me well the past three years, namely if I enjoy a given work and/or see merit in it, I’ll rank it above “No Award” in order of how much I like it. If I don’t like a given work or believe it is miscategorised, it goes under “No Award”. And yes, I’ve always used “No Award” in at least one category in the three years I’ve voted for the Hugos, because there’s always at least one nominee that I really really don’t like.

Of course, given the quality of the puppy nominees last year and the year before, there usually wasn’t much of a difference between “No Awarding” them because of the slates and “No Awarding” them because of lack of merit. Last year, for example, there were only three puppy nominees in the fiction categories that I liked enough to place them over “No Award”.

At Kirkus Reviews, Andrew Liptak reminds us that while the various puppies may have taken the problem to a new level, gaming the Hugo nominations actually isn’t anything new and that the Church of Scientology already tried it in 1987 and managed to get Black Genesis, a posthumous novel by their founder L. Ron Hubbard, onto the Hugo ballot with predictable results, namely that novel ended up under “No Award”.

At nerds of a feather, Joe Sherry reminds everybody that the Hugos aren’t the only SFF awards and that there is a whole world of genre awards out there that are blessedly free of canine interference.

One of those awards is of course the Locus Award, which announced its 2016 shortlist last week. It’s a very good shortlist in general and the overlap with the Hugos is notable, particularly in categories where the rabid puppies didn’t mess everything up with troll nominations. Coincidentally, the overlap between the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards should also be useful in identifying which nominees on the rabid puppy slate are human shields. And yes, I know that Vox Day tried to flood the Locus Awards as well with his Dead Elk, but it doesn’t seem to have worked beyond the obvious human shields.

Okay, so the science fiction novel category at the Locus Awards is a bit sad with Ancillary Mercy the only nominee I actually care for, but then Neal Stephenson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi and Gene Wolfe have plenty of fans, I just don’t happen to be one of them. The fantasy and first novel categories, on the other hand, look excellent as do the short fiction categories, the anthology and collection categories (which have no Hugo equivalent) and the various editing, magazine and art categories.

However, the YA category at the Locus Awards does look a bit strange, since it features five novels by male authors (two of them by the same author, Joe Abercrombie) – in a field that is eighty percent female. I’m not the only one to notice this either – there was quite a bit of discussion on Twitter about the lack of women in the YA category.

And indeed, Damien Walter asks at the Guardian if the Locus Awards have been hit with myopic sexism in the YA category.

Meanwhile, Joe Sherry points out at Adventures in Reading that Locus Award nominees in the YA category are all writers well regarded for their adult SFF. And since the Locus audience is probably more knowledgable about adult SFF than about YA, they are more likely to vote for authors whose adult SFF they enjoyed than for pure YA authors they may not be familiar with.

The actual nominees in the YA category seem to confirm this, since Joe Abercrombie’s adult fantasy is highly popular, Daryl Gregory and Daniel José Older are also well regarded for their adult work and Terry Pratchett is not just hugely popular, but also sadly dead, which means that this is the last chance to recognise his work.

Coincidentally, I have noticed a similar tendency in the Andre Norton Award, i.e. the YA category of the Nebula Awards, which at least in previous years often tended to honour authors better known for their adult SFF (who often were men) than YA authors, though this seems to have improved somewhat of late. It simply seems to be a case that a large number of SFF fans, particularly those invested enough in the genre to nominate for genre awards, are not really all that knowledgable about YA SFF. I don’t even exclude myself there. Though I don’t remember what precisely I nominated for the Locus Awards this year and – unlike the Hugos – I have no record of what I nominated either. Though I do remember that I nominated Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older (which made it) and Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (which didn’t) in the YA category.

The mini-controversy surrounding the all male shortlist for YA category of the Locus Awards also highlights a general issue I have with the Locus Awards, namely that the nominations are pre-seeded with choices from the Locus recommended reading list (the 2015 edition is here), which means that the pre-selected choices on the recommended reading list exert undue influence on the nominations. Plus, as Natalie Luhrs points out in her analysis of the Locus Recommended Reading list, the list is biased in favour of male writers and white writers. Of course, write-ins are possible and I have always had write-ins whenever I nominated for the Locus Awards, since my personal tastes don’t align all that well with those of the Locus reviewers. But I’m not aware that any write-in nominee ever made the shortlist, at least not one of mine.

Finally, could we maybe find a different name for Locus the magazine and the Locus Awards, since “locus” is a euphemism for toilet in my part of Germany, so saying the name out loud is always somewhat embarrassing, especially when talking with people not as plugged into the SFF scene? At any rate, I’ve had a couple of conversation along the lines of “The toilet magazine? It’s really called that?” or “Why are they called toilet awards?”

Comments are closed as on all awards related posts.

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Photos: The Ems Barrier at Gandersum

Here is the second part of my photo post about my Ascension Day outing to East Frisia. Yesterday, we took a look at the town of Leer, today we visit the Ems Barrier at Gandersum a few kilometers downstream.

Gandersum is a tiny village on the River Ems, just a handful of houses and a medieval church, approximately 90 inhabitants all in all. And it’s very likely that no one would ever have heard of Gandersum, if it hadn’t been chosen as the location for the Ems Barrier in the 1990s.

As the name suggests, the Ems Barrier can shut off the river Ems, if necessary, keeping water in or out. The Ems Barrier was built between 1998 and 2002 and has a dual purpose.

The first purpose is flood protection, similar to the Thames Barrier in London (on which the design of the Ems Barrier is based) and the Deltawerken in the Netherlands. The idea is quite simple. In case of a massive storm surge in the North Sea, when winter storms press tidal waters into the river mouths, causing flooding and – in particularly bad cases like the 1953 and 1962 floods – heavy casualties inland, the river barriers are closed and keep the spring tides from flooding cities and farmland further upstream.

However, the Ems Barrier has another, more controversial purpose. For it cannot just be used to keep storm surges out, but also to keep the river waters in, causing the level of the Ems to rise. Now why would anybody want to raise the level of the river Ems? The answer lies 36 kilometers inland in the town of Papenburg, which also happens to be the location of the shipyard Meyer Werft, which specialises in building cruise liners.

Now anybody who has ever seen a modern cruise liner knows that those vessels are massive. And the river Ems is fairly shallow. And so, as the cruise liners built by the Meyer Werft became ever bigger, transferring those vessels the 36 kilometers down the river Ems to the North Sea became something of a problem. Because the last thing you want is a brand-new cruise liner getting stuck on the way to the sea. And this is where the Ems Barrier comes in. Because closing the Ems barrier raises the level of the river high enough to allow a cruise liner to pass through at high tide. As you can imagine, artificially damming up a river just to let giant cruise liner pass isn’t exactly good for the environment (and it is notable how muddy the Ems is compared to e.g. the Weser or the Elbe), which is why the Ems Barrier was controversial from the start. However, the Meyer Werft is the biggest employer and tax payer in the region, so their needs won out over environmental concerns.

A cruise liner transfer down the Ems is a sight to see BTW, because the giant vessels tower over everything in the area. It is also an enormous logistic undertaking, because first you have to wait for a suitably high tide, then Ems Barrier has to be closed to raise the level of the river even further and even then the vessel often only has centimetres to spare before running aground.

Here are some photos (not mine) of what a cruise liner transfer looks like: Here you can see a comparatively tiny tugboat towing a cruise liner along the river Ems, while people look on (cruise liner transfers are big tourist attractions), here we have the Star Virgo literally towering above farm houses, here we have the Aida Diva passing by overhead, while cars and trucks on the highway 31 drive into the Ems tunnel at Leer and here we have an aerial shot of a cruise liner passing through the Ems Barrier.

And now let’s see what it looks like from the ground and without a cruise liner:

A look at the Ems Barrier from the seaward side.

A look at the lifting gate from the seaward side. Here the gate is in raised position – it is lowered in order to damm up the river or in case of storm surges.

A side view of the lifting gate.

A view along the Ems Barrier on the inland side. The bollards mark the fairway.

A closer look at the main traffic gate of the Ems Barrier. The gate is 60 meters wide and equipped with a rolling gate similar to the ones used at the Thames Barrier.

The rolling main gate is operated via ballast water, which is stored in this basin, when the gate is closed.

A look down the river Ems. Note the sailboats and the wind turbines in the distance. The righthand shore is Germany, the lefthand shore is the Netherlands.

A look across the Ems at the village of Dirzum on the far side of the river. Note the church and the windmill.

For more about the village of Dirzum, go here.

Finally, here we have the famed East Frisian lawnmowers. Yes, those are sheep grazing on the dike next to the Ems Barrier.

Sheep may be found all over the North German coasts, grazing on dikes. The keep the grass on the dikes short and their hoofs compact the soil, which in turn strengthens the dike and helps it withstand floods and storm surges better.

A group of sheep on top of the dike at Gandersum.

More sheep at Gandersum. These sheep have an odd way of looking at you, as if they’ve seen it all before and weren’t impressed then either. It’s notable that they have been shorn recently, which is unusual, since sheep in North Germany normally aren’t shorn before mid May to early June.

This little guy is a real cutie and also surprisingly trusting. The adults are a lot more wary.

This photo wasn’t taken at Gandersum, but at the highway rest stop Apen Remels. I simply like the idea that the operators of the rest stop were considerate enough to offer a separate toilet for Daleks.

Okay, so I know that it’s just a shower sign, but it looks suspiciously like a Dalek.

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Photos: Leer in East Frisia

Yesterday was Ascension Day a.k.a. Father’s Day, which is a public holiday in Germany.

Ascension Day is traditionally a day for outings, including the infamous Father’s Day tours where groups of young men, most of whom are not fathers, set out with handcarts and/or bicycles to wander around the countryside and get very very drunk. I talk a bit more about this tradition in this 2013 post.

In addition to being a public holiday, yesterday also had some very sunny and pleasant weather and as a result, the streets were full of people of all ages and genders enjoying themselves on bicycles, motorbikes or on foot.

Because of the nice weather and the fact that it was a public holiday, we also decided to go on a trip to East Frisia. Our first destination was the city of Leer, a lovely little town located on a sidearm of the river Ems. Afterwards, we followed the river Ems and visited the Ems flood barrier at Gandersum.

Of course, I also took photos. We’ll start with the town of Leer and I’ll post the photos of the Ems flood barrier tomorrow.

Leer is quite an interesting town. It only became a city in 1823, but the settlement is more than a thousand years old, located in an area that has been inhabited since the stone age. Leer is not particularly big, it only has about 35000 inhabitants, but roughly twenty percent of the German merchant fleet have Leer as its port of registration.

A view across Leer city harbour, located on the river Leda, a side arm of the river Ems. This is not the actual seaport, but a harbour for pleasure boats.

This wooden statue of Neptune sits on top of a bollar in the harbour of Leer. It looks as if Neptune has an unfortunate accident and impaled himself on his own trident.

A view across the bow of a former harbour barge refurbished into a pleasure boat with a three-master in the background. Note the baby seals.

Another look along the harbour promenade (which is named after the CEO of a tea import company – more on that later).

A folding bridge with the bridge control house.

An old storehouse on the harbour promenade has been transformed into a cultural events space. It also has a garden with a cherry tree in full bloom.

A close-up look at some apple blossoms. Just because…

A vintage harbour tugboat built in 1924. This tugboat was in service until 1993, i.e. almost 70 years.

This historical building at the harbour of Leer once housed the town scales. Nowadays, it is an upscale restaurant called “Zur Waage und zur Börse” (The scales and the exchange). In front of the building, there is a traditional May pole

The striking Neorenaissance townhall of Leer, built in 1894.

More information about the townhall of Leer may be found here.

A neogothic townhouse and the tower of the Great Reformed Church in the background.

Another look at the tower of the Great Reformed Church. The tower was built in 1804, though the church itself is older. The interior is quite plain, because the reformed churches eschew ornamentation.

For obvious historical reasons, most German protestants are Lutherans, but we also have approximately 188000 members of reformed churches. Most of these are found in Northwest Germany. The reformed churches have been traditionally strong in Frisia, both in Dutch West Frisia and German East Frisia. The congregration in Leer is one of the biggest reformed churches in Germany.

A beautifully restored store and merchant house along the harbour promenade.

The striking baroque townhouse was built in 1643. Since 1800, it has been occupied by the wine merchant J.W. Wolff.

Leer also happens to be the tea capital of Germany and is home to the Bünting group, one of Germany’s biggest tea importers (they also own a few supermarket chains). For while most Germans prefer coffee, East Frisia is all about tea and has its own special tea blends, called Ostfriesentee, its own tea ceremony (described here and here) and even the tea china and cutlery (which is actually made in Bremen) to go with it.

This historical townhouse in the centre Leer houses the Bünting tea museum.

This statue of a young woman carrying a tea pot and offering a cup of tea is called Teelke, the tea girl. In the background, you can see the flagship store of the Bünting company. The actual Bünting tea factory and head office are located outside the city, but this townhouse was where it all started back in 1803.

A fountain depicting two playing children on the Ernst Reuter Platz, named after a former mayor of Berlin who spent his childhood and teen years in Leer.

Tatort Taraxacum (Crime scene Taraxacum) is a crime and mystery bookshop/café/literary events space.

Here is the website of Tatort Taraxacum BTW, which seems to be a pretty awesome place. The building also houses the Leda-Verlag, a small press specialising in regional crime fiction as well as historical fiction set in East Frisia and the German coast in general. In general, I spotted quite a few independent bookstores in Leer, especially considering that the city isn’t all that big.

This early twentieth century townhouse is decorated with some very colourful murals.

We also had lunch in Leer. And since we were in East Frisia, we of course had fish. So here is my lunch:

My lunch: Rosefish filet with horseraddish cream sauce, duchess potatoes and salad.

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Yet more Hugo Debate 2016 – and a bit about the Clarke Awards

The 2016 Hugo debate is still going on, which isn’t surprising, since last year it lasted all the way until the winners were announced in August, whereupon it morphed into a debate of the winning works.

For my own contributions so far, see this post and this post.

Meanwhile, here are some more updates and reactions from around the web. Mike Glyer at File 770 has even more Hugo links, including several from puppy affiliated blogs and sites, which I won’t link to with “Do Not Link” down.

First of all, we have the second withdrawal, namely Black Gate, nominee in the best fanzine category and a good one, too, has withdrawn itself from consideration, because they don’t want the stink of puppy poo to stick to them. I certainly sympathise, though I’m also sad, because next to File 770, Black Gate was the other decent nominee in this category. George R.R. Martin weighs in on the Black Gate withdrawal and orders those nominees who were taken hostage by the rabid puppies not to withdraw.

So far, the good folks of MidAmeriCon have not yet released an updated ballot. I suspect they’re waiting if there are more withdrawals/disqualifications before publishing the updated ballot. After all, the Sasquan organisers last year had to update their ballot almost daily for a week or so.

Furthermore, we have a few general summaries of the whole affair courtesy of Scott Timberg at Slate and Tufayel Ahmed at Newsweek.

The puppies’, both rabid and sad, least favourite critic Damien Walter (they hate him so much that they have even attributed articles written by David Barnett and Adam Roberts to Damien Walter, since apparently reading a byline is beyond the ability of some puppies) weighs in on his blog. His suggestion for dealing with the rabid puppies match mine, namely figure out who they are and ban their arses.

Among other things, Damien Walter points out that it’s rather strange that H.P. Lovecraft was nominated in the best fanwriter category for the 1941 Retro Hugos, when he died in 1937. The nominations are probably for posthumous publications, though given that this is H.P. Lovecraft we’re talking about here, one cannot help but wonder whether certain eldritch forces were involved. Though personally, I suspect that the best fanwriter Retro Hugo nomination for Lovecraft may be the most notable sign of puppy impact on the Retro Hugos. Okay, there are also the many nominations for Robert A. Heinlein, but then Heinlein’s popularity extends way beyond the puppies and he was doing some damn good work in 1941.

Regarding the present day ballot, Damien Walter expresses his surprise that Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Aurora is missing from the shortlist, but suspects that Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves and Robinson’s Aurora may well have split the vote of those who like their SF heavy on the infodumping. Since I feared I’d have to deal with both Seveneves and Aurora on the shortlist, neither of which is my thing at all, I’m glad that this is one bullet we managed to dodge.

In a follow-up post, Damien Walter also shares his theories regarding the identity of the most mysterious of this year’s Hugo nominees, namely Chuck Tingle, author of Space Raptor Butt Invasion, and comes to the conclusion that whoever Chuck Tingle may be, he is one hell of a savvy marketer.

Marian Crane not just starts off her Hugo post with a great pie-fight gif, she also finds herself amused by the Hugo nomination for Chuck Tingle. She also makes a good point, namely that if Vox Day felt that the obvious troll nomination of Space Raptor Butt Invasion would enrage those he calls “Social Justice Warriors”, CHORFs (nope, that was Brad Torgersen), puppy-kickers or whatever, he may well be in for a huge surprise. Because – hint – only prudes and puppies think “butt” is somehow a bad word and only homophobes are offended by gay erotica, particularly gay parody erotica.

ETA: I’ve seen a couple of people say at File 770 and other places that they don’t want to read Space Raptor Butt Invasion, which is of course their good right. I guess I had underestimated that many Americans in general and SFF folks in particular are weird about sex.

Meanwhile, N.K. Jemisin points out on Twitter (screenshot here) that even though Chuck Tingle seems to be a pretty cool person, his (I’m going by stated gender here, even though Chuck Tingle is clearly a pen name) nomination still keeps deserving nominees off the ballot, many of which may be women, writers of colour, LGBT writers or international writers. And it’s pretty obvious that for Vox Day, gaming the Hugos is as much about keeping people and works he dislikes out than getting his choices in.

Meanwhile, Cuck Tingle himself responds to both the Rabid Puppies and those who criticise his nomination by publishing a sequel to his Hugo nominated story Space Raptor Butt Invasion, a sequel entitled Space Raptor Butt Redemption. If Vox Day pushed Chuck Tingle onto the ballot merely to troll us all, he may be in for a rude awakening, because so far Chuck Tingle us outtrolling Vox. Conceptual Neighbourhood also points out that Vox Day’s attempts to weaponise Chuck Tingle and his work backfired badly.

Though it’s not just Vox Chuck Tingle is trolling, it’s everybody. For example, at File 770 Mike Glyer posts a series of Tweets by Chuck Tingle, which seem to be his answer to requests to withdraw.

Nonetheless, I like Chuck Tingle and his way of dealing with this whole mess. And we’ve certainly had not quite serious Hugo nominees before like John Scalzi’s April Fools story “Shadow War of the Night Dragon”. Though I still feel sorry for whichever legitimate nominee was kept off the ballot by Space Raptor Butt Invasion.

But enough about Chuck Tingle who seems to unduly dominate the Hugo discussion this year (apparently using “butt” in the title of a short story is still newsworthy in the US) and on to other nominee reactions. Spacefaring Extradimensional Happy Kittens has done us all a favour and compiled links to the reactions of nominees who found themselves on the Rabid Puppies slate, often against their will.

The people behind the horror podcast Tales to Terrify were horrified to find themselves on the Rabid Puppies slate. They’re connected to StarShipSofa, a previous winner in the best fancast category, and seem to be yet more of Vox Day’s human shields.

Alastair Reynolds, whose novella Slow Bullets had the highly dubious honour of being on being on both the Sad and the Rabid Puppy list, points out that he wants nothing to do with puppies of either stripe and that his request to be removed from both puppy lists were ignored. Slow Bullets was getting buzz way before either puppy list appeared, so Alastair Reynolds may well be one of those nominees who would have made it without canine help.

Campbell nominee Alyssa Wong who squeaked just onto the Sad Puppies list, very likely due to people who were recommending decidedly unpuppyish works and authors to check the honesty of this year’s Sad Puppy organisers (Good news: They were honest. Bad news: You may well have made some good authors doubt themselves), explains that she’s not withdrawing, since Vox Day’s objective was specifically to keep people like her off the ballot.

At KBoards, David VanDyke, whose novelette “What Price Humanity?” was on the Rabid Puppies slate, distances himself from all political genre infighting and states that he only submitted to the There Will Be War anthology (published by Castalia House) because he wanted to work with Jerry Pournelle.

S.R. Algernon, author of the Hugo nominated short story “Asymmetrical Warfare”, which was on the Rabid Puppy slate, weighs in at Goodreads and basically says that they (I couldn’t find out which gender S.R. Algernon is, so I’m going with “they” for now) wants nothing to do with the politics of the whole Hugo debate. He also offers links to other stories they’ve written in a follow-up post to allow people to better evaluate their work.

John Picacio, winner of the best pro artist Hugo in 2013, weighs in on the subject of the 2016 best pro artist ballot and puts in a good word for Larry Elmore. In the comments, someone also gives information on the other nominees in this category and their backgrounds, if – like me – you have no idea who these people even are.

For the statistics geeks, Brandon Kempner of Chaos Horizon and Greg Hullender of Rocket Stack Rank both offer an analysis of the 2016 Hugo nominations and also try to estimate the size of the Rabid Puppy voting bloc. According to those estimates, Vox Day’s Dead Elk (not my term, alas, someone at File 770 came up with that one) number somewhere between 220 and 300. And considering we had almost 4000 nominators in the biggest categories (which coincidentally show the least puppy influence), it’s damn depressing that five to seven percent of nominators with malicious intentions can flood the ballot with their choices.

So what do we do now and where do we go from here? The G. asks these very questions at nerds of a feather. He (I happen to know The G and that he’s male) also states that he won’t back any counterslates, regardless of political background (neither will I, since very few people share my tastes anyway). He also wonders whether to disengage completely and defect to the Locus Awards.

Now I like the Locus Awards, find them valuable and normally participate, unless I forget. The winners picked are also usually good. However, the Locus Awards don’t have fan categories, unlike the Hugos. I also don’t particularly care for the fact that they pre-seed the ballot with their recommended reading list, which often does not reflect my taste. And yes, I know you can write in candidates, but how many write-ins have a chance. Plus, as Natalie Luhrs points out in her analysis of the Locus Recommended Reading list, the list is biased in favour of male writers and white writers. So I prefer the open nomination system of the Hugos. Plus, Vox Day has announced that he is planning to manipulate the Locus Awards (and the new Dragon Awards) as well.

At his livejournal, Kevin Standalee proposes a change to the Hugo voting process he calls three-stage voting, which inserts an intermediary semifinals/longlist round between the initial nominations and the final ballot. He also goes a bit deeper into the idea in this follow-up post.

Conceptual Neighbourhood has a post regarding what to do about the Hugos now with a follow-up post here, in which they evaluate various proposals in how to deal with the puppy mess.

At ComicMix, Glenn Hauman weighs in in favour of blanket voting everything on any slate under “No Award”, since Neil Gaiman, Stephen King or Lois McMaster Bujold don’t need a pity Hugo. He’s right that none of these nominees need a pity Hugo, but I still don’t see why I should punish writers and works I like and often nominated myself for something that Vox Day did.

Ben Peek makes a similar point and also advocates for voting everything on any slate under “No Award”. He also urges nominees who were on a slate to withdraw. I find this hugely problematic, especially considering that both Vox Day and the Sad Puppies refused to take people off their respective slates/lists on request and got real pissy about it, too. Never mind that unwilling slate nominees withdrawing may well mean that we lose the few decent nominees on the ballot, since it’s pretty obvious that the people behind trash like “If You Were an Award, My Love”, “SJWs always lie” or “Safe Space as a Rape Room” won’t withdraw.

At Amazing Stories, Steve Davidson also champions blanket no awarding everything that was on a slate except for those slated nominees who stated that they were opposed to slates and wanted to be removed. He also urgens voters to vote their conscience.

At Alas, a Blog!, cartoonist Ampersand proposes a strategy that more closely matches my own, namely no award the bad nominees which would not have made the ballot with canine help and judge everything else on merit.

Joe Follansbee declares the Hugos dead altogether after two years (three if you include Larry Correia’s second Sad Puppy campaign in 2014, which also messed up the ballot, though not as badly as in 2015 and 2016) of puppy shenangigans.

At The Booksmugglers, Thea James and Ana Grilo beg to disagree that the Hugos are dead and urge everybody who cares about the award to participate and vote this year. I just bought my supporting membership for MidAmeriCon II BTW, so what are you waiting for?

Jim C. Hines shares a few Hugo requests, namely that nobody should tell anybody else how to vote (which I completely agree with), that people shouldn’t behave abusively towards the nominees and that there should be no asterisks, because the puppies were apparently really offended by the wooden asterisks handed out before the ceremony and sold for charity last year.

As I said, I agree wholly with not telling anybody how to vote and with not heaping the nominees with abuse. But while I did see some comments that crossed the line on the non-puppy side and some innocents got caught in the crossfire, the vast majority of abuse last year and the one before came from the puppy side, both sad and rabid. Because a lot of the most outspoken puppies (which does not mean the puppy nominees, but the spokespuppies) seem to be incapable of getting even through a single post on the without getting nasty. I’ve been the target of their abuse, as have been many of my friends. Meanwhile, the noisiest puppies also seem to be the most thin-skinned people alive, who take offence at even the mildest of criticisms. For people who always complain about trigger warnings and the like, the prominent puppies are sure easily triggered.

Which brings me to the asterisks. Now I’ve never really understood why the asterisks were so controversial and why some puppies felt so offended by them (apart from the fact that some of them get offended by someone who looks at them the wrong way). I merely see asterisks as a footnote indicator (and there will be an asterisk and a footnote behind the 2015 and 2016 Hugo shortlists), but apparently to Americans, asterisks behind sports results mean that someone cheated, whereas in Europe an asterisk behind a sports result merely means “Check out the footnote”, which could say anything from “This match had to be broken off because of heavy rain/snowfall/the stadion floodlights failing” to “Someone cheated”.

Apparently, some puppies also feel that the wooden asterisks look like arseholes (I believe they call them CHORFholes), which again makes me wonder about their mental age and maturity, because I know no one over the age of 12 who checks out what their own butthole looks like with a mirror. What is more, given the asterisk = arsehole comparison and insistence on the part of some noisy puppies that Space Raptor Butt Invasion is the revenge for the asterisks, some of them do seem to have a bad case of anal fixation.

David Gerrold, last year’s Woldcon GoH and Hugo ceremony toastmaster and the person who commissioned the wooden asterisks, replies to Jim C. Hines that no offense was intended and that given how thin-skinned some puppies are, they would always have found something to take offence at. He also points out that the asterisks raised 2800 USD for a charity that runs an orangutan in Borneo.

Laura Tegan Gjovaag defends David Gerrold and the asterisks by pointing out that it was the puppy organisers put the asterisks behind the 2015 Hugos and that she can’t feel sorry for those who felt offended. I feel inclined to agree with her – never mind that I don’t see just why the puppy leaders are so furious about the asterisks anyway.

While on the subject of puppies, Dara Korra’ti had the misfortune of getting into a Twitter discussion with one of them who calls himself Marc DuQuesne after the villain in E.E. Smith’s Skylark novels (though Marc DuQuesne and “hero” Richard Seaton later team up to commit genocide together) and reports about the experience on her blog. “Blackie DuQuesne” repeats basic puppy talking points, the puppies only reacted to “secret slates”, since absolutely no one could possibly have enjoyed the works that the puppies dislike. It’s all stuff we’ve heard a thousand times before from the puppy camp and it’s still as clueless as it always was.

Dara Korra’ti also points out the new puppy/rightwing jerk in general buzz phrase “virtue signalling”, which basically claims that people who express views that don’t match those of rightwing jerks don’t actually hold those views, they just express them publicly to show that they are good people. Just like absolutely no one could have honestly liked Ancillary Justice or “If you were a dinosaur, my love” or “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere” or whichever Hugo nominee/winner the puppies hate this week. The phrase “virtue signalling” originates with British journalist James Bartholomew who is actually proud of coining it, which should tell you all you need to know about him.

At Bibliodaze, Ceilidh points out that the puppies’ tactics are deliberately aimed at excluding people they don’t like both from the Hugos and the genre. And this goes for both the sad and rabid puppies, since prominent members of both are on record that they don’t want works that don’t match their very narrow definition of the SFF in the genre. Just take a look at Brad Torgersen’s now infamous “Nutty Nuggets” post (I don’t really have to link to that again, do I? Just google it).

However, Ceilidh also points out that women, LGBT writers and writers of colour have always been part of the genre, from the very beginning on (quite literally, since Mary Shelley and Margaret Cavendish, two of the earliest SFF writers, were women).

On the other hand, Charles Payseur points out at Quick Sip Reviews that puppies and other reactionaries have always been part of the genre as well and that the puppies are but the symptom of a larger problem, namely that there are a lot of people who resent change and idolize a monocultural past that never existed. And now that those people feel under siege, because things are finally getting a little bit better, they strike back.

We are currently seeing a variation on the same phenomenon here in Germany. The conservative CDU under Angela Merkel has finally morphed into a party that takes the the Christian bit in its name (CDU stands for Christian Democratic Union) seriously and welcomes refugees fleeing various civil wars and undemocratic systems in the Middle East and Africa (it’s not just Syria, but also Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Mali, etc…) and coincidentally has also finally become a party I can imagine myself voting for and promptly we get a backlash from disgruntled and envy-driven petit bourgeois jerks in the form of the AfD and Pegida who can’t handle the fact that their Germany (which was never a place I identified with in the first place) is changing. And once again, these people were always there, they have merely become a lot bolder instead of keeping their hateful views to themselves. Personally, I also think we’ve been too tolerant towards these hateful people for too long – there is a reason I wrote Christmas Eve at the Purple Owl Café, because the person who was disinvited from an event (though it was a New Year’s Day rather than a Christmas party) for refusing to tolerate the presence of a horrible racist, that was me.

Charles Payseur also links to the crowdfunding campaign of Rosarium Publishing, a company which specialises in SFF by diverse authors. I already linked to the campaign over at the Speculative Fiction Showcase, where that sort of thing usually goes, but since it’s a really worthy project, here is the link again.

At The Hysterical Hamster, Ian Mond shares his thoughts about the Hugo and Clarke Award shortlist and points out that one is much better than the other. We largely agree on the Hugo nominated novels, though I like Jim Butcher better than he does. As for the Clarke Award, Ian Mond doesn’t much care for The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, which I enjoyed a whole lot, but loves Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson, which I don’t care for.

While we’re on the subject of the Arthur C. Clarke Awards, which celebrate their 30th anniversary this year, at The Guardian Clarke Award director Tom Hunter looks back on thirty years of Clarke Awards and wonders what the future holds for the award.

Meanwhile, Nina Allen also compares the Clarke Awards positively to the Hugos and not just because they have the better shortlist, but also because the fact that the Clarke Awards are juried makes gaming and log-rolling attempts like what the puppies did in 2015 and 2016 impossible. She also believes that the fan awards like the Hugos don’t generate as much critical discussion. But then, the Clarke Awards don’t normally generate a whole lot of critical discussion outside the jury either – except that one year when Christopher Priest decided to insult the entire shortlist, including calling Charles Stross a yapping internet puppy before “puppy” was a serious insult in SFF circles, and promptly caused a massive genre uproar.

Nina Allen goes on to discuss the perception that the Clarke Award tends to reward for literary than core genre works (not true) as well as its record with regard to diversity of the nominees. It’s a really great post in general, so just go over there and read it.

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