The most common reaction when people find out I was nominated for a Hugo Award is for them to ask “What’s a Hugo Award?” So I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of people who are vaguely aware of propaganda claiming that right-wing bigots tried to deny women and minorities the most prestigious award in SFF outnumber the people who know what the award in question is.
Thanks to establishment mouthpieces like Entertainment Weekly, Wired, and The Guardian, even fewer people know the easily demonstrable truth–that Sad Puppies was a corrective measure aimed at balancing the dreary political message fiction that had come to dominate the awards ballot by nominating popular works that people actually like to read.
Into the confusion swirling about the Hugos step the Qu Qu and @Azu_Rayn: two intrepid investigators who sifted through a mountain of information to produce the best video I have yet seen on the Sad and Rabid Puppies campaigns. My compliments to these gentlemen for doing the hard research so you don’t have to.
Everything you wanted to know about the Hugo controversy but were afraid to ask is here:
Here’s the Harlan Ellison segment that was referenced in the video above:
My comment: far be it from me to differ with Uncle Harlan, but the intervening years have shown that the internet itself has devalued the Hugos less than the self-interested machinations of Tor Books science fiction manager Patrick Nielsen Hayden.