/lit/ - Literature

Sorry, the Puppies set themselves up for failure here.

If their supposed liberal conspiracy actually existed they wouldn't have steamrolled the nomination process.

Yeah, even if it ended there, there would have been people who ideologically didn't read the books and didn't even consider them. That shit is background noise compared to the votes from people who would try to consider their votes on the merits of the books themselves.

If they hadn't relied on ideologues who don't even read to pump up their numbers 'to strike a blow against SJWs' they wouldn't have amassed so many sour grapes votes from people who remember getting novels kicked out of their hands in high school by meatheads.

If they hadn't declared their campaign a successful blow against those damn liberal nerds they might not have amassed so many sour grapes votes from people who resent the implication that their political leanings should somehow disqualify them from a discussion about whether a book is good or not.

If they hadn't shown such blatant favoritism to certain publishing houses and certain editors they might not have amassed so many sour grapes votes from people who expected the awards to be about a genre and an industry rather than one man's masturbatory employee of the month award.

The Puppies made complete asses out of themselves, sabotaged their own ideological message (which was, ultimately a question of 'fairness') by being actively racist, sexist and so on, and somehow believed they could court the votes of the wider science fiction community by actively and maliciously attacking other authors and their fans.

So yeah, I'm not surprised they got blown out. And because they muscled out some actually good books with some of the worst SF of the year, I'm glad they did.