When I began tweeting as @sadpupsff a year ago I quickly realized that I don't read fast enough. Not even one-one hundredth fast enough. There is so very much SFF out there, especially in indies, that I couldn't possibly figure out which works are or aren't hostile to religion, conservative or libertarian politics, or anything else, let along review them for the all-important fun factor.
What we really need is a resource that would give, not just the best works of the year in the opinion of anyone who cares to comment (as the Sad Puppies 4 web site has, and it's a useful resource in its own way: see the links in the side bar), but a list of as many works as possible, and whether they're as unenjoyable as an episode of Law and Order for how they depict conservatives and the religious, or as fun as James H. Schmitz's The Witches of Karres (1966) (which if you haven't read, go read it: rollicking good fun and not a message in sight, except be good; be brave; and remember to wash behind your ears).
I know at least one other Sad Puppy blogger thinking along these lines; if we could get some people together as readers and everyone read a book a month and review it for Sad Puppy criteria, we could start to get a good reading list together. There are other bloggers who already have lists of their own, and I intend to put links to more of them in the sidebar also; and also links to Sad Puppy author blogs and Amazon pages.
Celebrating, discussing, and promoting meritorious science fiction and fantasy, especially works excluded by SJW tyrants. Remember the 2015 Hugos. #SFF
Sunday, August 21, 2016
What's a Sad Puppy?
So what are we talking about, anyway?
I'm going to try to find Larry Correia's original blog post in which he criticized the trend he saw (and still sees, AFAIK) in science fiction and fantasy (SFF) publishing toward giving preference to works that generally toe the left-wing line and, for extra points, are written by authors whose personal identity (race, sex and sexual 'orientations', ethnicity) place them in a left-wing favored 'victim group'. In it, he included a little cartoon of himself making a plea for a return to intrinsic merit and fun in SFF, which he somehow connected to helping the plight of sad puppies. (I'm not describing it adequately, but it was very funny. The artwork would have gotten a C when I was in first grade.)
There is no "official" Sad Puppies organization, just a lot of people who are sympathetic with Larry Correia's complaint and those of bloggers like Sarah Hoyt and John C. Wright who chimed in with him. Because of the inherently loose nature of the group, there isn't any clear, bright line defining what is and what isn't a Sad Puppy work or author. I myself am not affiliated with any of the organizers of the Sad Puppies 4 web site (though whatever slight contact I've had with them has been friendly), but I'll describe what I mean by calling SFF works and authors Sad Puppies.
The complaint Sad Puppies have about how SFF has evolved since the heyday of giants like Heinlein, Asimov, Brackett, Burroughs, and Clarke is that, whatever the politics of the author and whatever their identities, they wrote stories that were fun to read. Sometimes the stories made political points about the issues of their day, like Asimov in "The Martian Way". Sometimes they were hostile toward religion, like Burroughs in The Gods of Mars. But they never figured that getting in their digs was a substitute for telling a good tale. They didn't write to assure their readers that their opinions were the "correct" ones and then expect praise for it. They didn't write to deliberately cajole like-thinkers and drive off dissenters. They didn't write propaganda.
So a Sad Puppy work, as I use the term, is a work that (1) is fun to read, and (2) is either not "message fiction" or at least does not make readers who disagree with its message reasonably conclude that the author hates them and would rather they went away and read something else.
I'm going to try to find Larry Correia's original blog post in which he criticized the trend he saw (and still sees, AFAIK) in science fiction and fantasy (SFF) publishing toward giving preference to works that generally toe the left-wing line and, for extra points, are written by authors whose personal identity (race, sex and sexual 'orientations', ethnicity) place them in a left-wing favored 'victim group'. In it, he included a little cartoon of himself making a plea for a return to intrinsic merit and fun in SFF, which he somehow connected to helping the plight of sad puppies. (I'm not describing it adequately, but it was very funny. The artwork would have gotten a C when I was in first grade.)
There is no "official" Sad Puppies organization, just a lot of people who are sympathetic with Larry Correia's complaint and those of bloggers like Sarah Hoyt and John C. Wright who chimed in with him. Because of the inherently loose nature of the group, there isn't any clear, bright line defining what is and what isn't a Sad Puppy work or author. I myself am not affiliated with any of the organizers of the Sad Puppies 4 web site (though whatever slight contact I've had with them has been friendly), but I'll describe what I mean by calling SFF works and authors Sad Puppies.
The complaint Sad Puppies have about how SFF has evolved since the heyday of giants like Heinlein, Asimov, Brackett, Burroughs, and Clarke is that, whatever the politics of the author and whatever their identities, they wrote stories that were fun to read. Sometimes the stories made political points about the issues of their day, like Asimov in "The Martian Way". Sometimes they were hostile toward religion, like Burroughs in The Gods of Mars. But they never figured that getting in their digs was a substitute for telling a good tale. They didn't write to assure their readers that their opinions were the "correct" ones and then expect praise for it. They didn't write to deliberately cajole like-thinkers and drive off dissenters. They didn't write propaganda.
So a Sad Puppy work, as I use the term, is a work that (1) is fun to read, and (2) is either not "message fiction" or at least does not make readers who disagree with its message reasonably conclude that the author hates them and would rather they went away and read something else.
Hello World
There's nothing official about Sad Puppy Book Club. This is a blog by the same person who has been using the Twitter account @sadpupsff since August 2015 to celebrate, discuss, and promote meritorious science fiction and fantasy, especially works that are excluded by the SJW tyrants who made such a muck of the 2015 Hugo awards.
Over the year since starting that, I've often thought of topics that called for the deeper treatment that a blog could provide, and today--the day after the 2016 Hugo awards, which snubbed Jerry Pournelle, Toni Weisskopf, and others--I decided to take the plunge.
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