Dragon Awards Refuse to Let Authors Withdraw
ETA: Dragon Con has reconsidered.
“[O]ver the last couple of days, we got an earful from our fans and others. The issue also caused a second author to ask us to remove her book from the ballot as well. We’ve reconsidered and changed our mind.”
ETA2: John Scalzi has also reconsidered, and will now remain on the ballot.
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The Dragon Awards were created last year to recognize the best SF/F books, comics, games, TV, and films of the year. Nomination and voting are open to anyone and everyone, and the awards are presented at Dragon Con.
The ballot this year appears to be a mix of genuinely popular work and works where individual authors or groups campaigned hard to get nominated. File 770 published an analysis looking at Goodreads, Library Thing, and Amazon review numbers of the different nominees. I trust folks can draw their own conclusions.
On August 4, finalist Alison Littlewood posted that she was withdrawing her book from consideration. She notes:
“While this would normally be a great pleasure, it has also been brought to my notice that my book has been selected by a voting bloc who are attempting, for reasons of their own, to influence the awards outcome. Essentially, the same group who set out to fix the Hugo Awards are now encouraging their supporters to follow their voting choices in the Dragon Awards.”
Two days ago, finalist John Scalzi also withdrew his book from the award, saying in part:
“The reason is simple: Some other finalists are trying to use the book and me as a prop, to advance a manufactured ‘us vs. them’ vote-pumping narrative based on ideology or whatever. And I just… can’t. I don’t have the interest and I’m on a deadline, and this bullshit is even more stale and stupid now than it was the several other times it was attempted recently, with regard to genre awards.”
Rather, Littlewood and Scalzi tried to withdraw from the award. But according to a follow-up post from Littlewood, Pat Henry of the Dragon Awards is “declining” these requests. Both Scalzi and Littlewood’s books still appear on the ballot.
Henry’s statement, as posted on Littlewood’s blog, claims:
“We are aware of the rabid puppies and justice warriors efforts to effect the voting and we go through a number of steps to avoid ballot stuffing or other vote rigging behaviors. While we didn’t start the Dragon Awards to foil these two groups, we believe that as we add voters, they will become irrelevant in the our awards.”
Note the false equivalence of rabid puppies, a self-proclaimed group created by Theodore Beale, with “justice warriors,” generally used as an insult against people speaking up for greater representation and inclusion. The rabid puppy slate was posted on Beale’s blog back in June. I’m curious where the equivalent “justice warrior” slate supposedly appeared…
Henry might be right that, when and if the awards add enough voters, slates might become irrelevant. Or they might not. But in either case, that hypothetical future doesn’t change the fact that right now, the awards are a mess, some of the campaigning is ugly, nasty, and hateful, and some authors don’t want to be dragged into that cesspool.
I hope Pat Henry and Dragon Con will reconsider their decision.
Lostshadows
August 9, 2017 @ 11:10 am
If they’re trying to expand the number of voters to cancel out voting slates, publicly acting like jerks to authors who wish to withdraw seems like a bad tactic.
I understand they probably want to keep a wider range of actually popular works, but it’s not going to be worth the bad publicity.
Avilyn
August 9, 2017 @ 6:52 pm
They’re on the wrong track if they’re trying to add voters and represent “popular” works. Last year, I nominated works, and voted when the final ballot came out. This year? First I heard about the Dragon Awards was when authors announced they’d been nominated. The only email I had from Dragon Con was a ballot to vote for the nominees this year. You’d think if they were trying to get a list of popular works across fandom, they’d have emailed last year’s voters to say “Hey! Nominate your favorite works again this year!”
Muccamukk
August 9, 2017 @ 7:49 pm
@Avilyn: or e-mailed everyone with a membership, or promoted it AT ALL.
Avilyn
August 9, 2017 @ 7:55 pm
@Muccamukk – Exactly. Of course, keeping the nominating base small means the ballot is easier to rig, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
Kevin B.
August 9, 2017 @ 8:37 pm
Weren’t these awards started by some sad puppy off shoot to foil the “elitarian” Hugo’s? Or am I thinking of something else? The wording of their response seems to support that at least.
Martin
August 10, 2017 @ 2:46 am
This seems to be (another) “slow mo crash” in the making. Even assuming good intentions, forcing an author on an award ballot is a stupid idea. Whatever Pat Henry is trying to achieve, there will not be a positive outcome for anyone on this course.
Bieeanda
August 10, 2017 @ 12:22 pm
Update from John Scalzi, with a link to a related article from the Verge: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2017/08/10/update-on-the-dragon-awards-and-me/
Jim C. Hines
August 10, 2017 @ 1:11 pm
Bieeanda – Thank you. I was just updating the post with a statement from Dragon Con that they would now respect the requests of authors to withdraw from the ballot. I’ve added a link to Scalzi’s blog post as well.
Sally
August 10, 2017 @ 9:17 pm
Kevin B: you are correct. Sad Pups started it and immediately lost control (AGAIN) to the Rabids, plus some newer “me too” right-wing types who are being called “the Scrappy-Doos”. The conchair statement is full of Pupspeak.
Seems to me that having it voted on by sending email to all the (googles) 80,000 members of DragonCon would provide a wide variety of opinion and ensure nobody could game the award. That would be as popularly fannish as you could get!
Angua
August 11, 2017 @ 11:36 am
N. K. Jemisin is withdrawing, too.
http://nkjemisin.com/2017/08/withdrawing-from-the-dragon-awards/
Pixel Scroll 8/13/17 The Filers On The Hill See The Scroll Going Down, And The Eyes In Their Heads See The Pixels Spinning Round | File 770
August 13, 2017 @ 10:16 pm
[…] Perhaps the Dragon Awards, a new SF/F award which is now being ravaged by slate voting from the pups, will learn from the Hugo experience. Or perhaps not. […]