Wrath of the Rabid

To Recap:

In 2013, Larry Correia set out to demonstrate that the Hugo Awards were handed out more for political reasons than quality.  He created the “Campaign to End Puppy-Related Sadness,” Sad Puppies for short, with a Spokesmanatee named Wendell.  The first campaign–an attempt to get Correia’s “Monster Hunter Legion” nominated–failed.

He continued the effort with Sad Puppies 2 the following year and managed to get quite a few of his selections nominated.  Vox Day’s “Opera Vitae Aeterna” was deliberately chosen to incite apoplexy.  Larry wrote  Science fiction is colossal today, spanning books, movies, television shows, comic books, and, yes, even children’s cartoons.  The Hugo Awards are supposed to be the recognition of the best works across that entire span.  In a way, the voting system is a representative democracy; those who pay the membership fee become the representatives for all of the science fiction and fantasy fandom.

The smaller the voter pool, the less representative of fandom those voters tend to be.  Only four thousand people voted for the 2016 nominations–which “smashes the previous record of 2,122 ballots set last year.”  With such a small number of voters, the use of public slates or private “whisper campaigns” can be easily accomplished with a mere handful of friends.

The Hugo awards do not need voting changes, membership restrictions, and ever more arcane mechanisms for counting the votes to dilute the effects of slate voting.  The proper solution is more–more Puppies, more slates, more fans, more voters–so that the representatives of fandom, in general, better reflect the general tastes of fandom, rather than the slanted and biased views of a privileged few.

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