Rabid Puppy Reading List

Is it that time of year already? Nominations for the Hugo Awards are being gathered, and those of you who hold memberships are being asked to submit your nominations to go on the ballot for voters to vote on in the fall.
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The Puppy-kickers are our ideological foes bent on replacing popular and well crafted sci fi tales with politically correct science-free and entertainment-free moping dreck that reads like something written by a highschool creative writing course dropout.

The Puppy-kickers have repeatedly and vehemently assured us assured us that soliciting votes from likeminded fans for stories you judge worthy was a “slate” and therefore was (for reasons not specified) totally and diabolically evil and wrong and bad, was not something insiders had been doing for decades, and was always totally inexcusable, except when they did it, and voted in a slate to grant ‘No Award’ to categories where they had lost their stranglehold over the nominations.

In that spirit, I hereby officially announce in my capacity as the Grand Inquisitor of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors, that the following list is the recommended reading list of our Darkest Lord only, and not a voting slate.

These are the recommendations of my editor, Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, the most hated man in Science Fiction, but certainly the best editor I have had the pleasure to work with.

This list is not complete, and I will add to it as the Dark Lord of Evil issues decrees from Skullcrusher Mountain or Yuggoth-on-the-Rim.

The words below are his. (But I second his recommendation of Andy Weir as best new writer, and Jeffro Johnson for Best Related Work.)

Rabid Puppies 2016: Best New Writer

We’ll begin with the Campbell Award: Best New Writer category:

Pierce Brown
Cheah Kai Wai
Sebastien de Castell
Marc Miller
Andy Weir

Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Related Work

Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Editor (Long-form)

The preliminary recommendations for the endangered Patrick Nielsen Hayden consolation prize.

In case you weren’t aware, this category only exists because Patrick Nielsen Hayden cried publicly about not being able to win Best Editor against the likes of Gardner Dozois, but since virtually no one except the writer edited has the ability to tell what an editor has done to a manuscript, let alone how well he has done it, it’s been little more than a Tor Editor Appreciation Prize since its inception.

Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Graphic Story

The preliminary recommendations for the Best Graphic Story Hugo:

GamerGate Life by Kukuruyo
Full Frontal Nerdity by Aaron Williams
Erin Dies Alone by Cory Rydell and Grey Carter
Awkward Zombie by Katie Friedrich
Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell

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Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Semiprozine

The preliminary recommendations for Best Semiprozine category:

Abyss & Apex
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Daily Science Fiction
Sci-Phi Journal
Strange Horizons

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Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Fanzine

This appears to be one of those increasingly misnamed and outdated categories, but based on the previous nominees, it has apparently become the functional equivalent of “best SF-related site”. Using that as a guideline while keeping the eligibility rules in mind, here are the preliminary recommendations for Best Fanzine:

Black Gate succumbed to the genetic fallacy in turning down last year’s nomination; regardless of whether John O’Neill will do the same or not again this year, it remained the best SF-related site in 2015. That being said, the Castalia House blog, now under the leadership of the Hugo-nominated Jeffro Johnson, is rapidly gaining on it with the addition of excellent Castalians from the SF/F wargaming, computer gaming, and RPG worlds.

File 770, for all that it has been said to be a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” and features some of the least intelligent commenters on the Internet, does an excellent job of chronicling events in the SF/F world across the ideological spectrum. Mike Glyer’s fan-flagship site continues to be a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in science fiction.

Tangent Online, as one of the very few places that reviews short fiction, is one of the few sites helping keep SF short fiction alive. Mad Genius Club can be hit or miss, but contains everything from writing advice and industry analysis to Hugo history, short stories, and meandering streams-of-consciousness. You never know what you’re going to get from the 12 unsettled prodigies who make up the madhouse, but it’s interesting and even educational more often than not.

And like these five fanzines or not, ideologically approve of their contributors or not, they are the sites that were most influential in driving the discussion in the SF world in 2015.

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Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Fancast

The preliminary recommendations for the Best Fancast category.

Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Fan Writer

The preliminary recommendations for the Best Fan Writer category.

Jeffro Johnson: The author of the massive, and magnificent, Appendix N series at Castalia House.

Dave Freer: The most consistently reliable Mad Genius of the excellent SF/F bloggers at the Mad Genius Club.

Morgan: One of the foremost literary historians of fantasy in general and Sword & Sorcery in particular.

Shamus Young: If the name seems familiar to you, he’s the author of the utterly hilarious DM of the Rings. He’s now one of the more intelligent observers of the game industry, among other things.

Zenopus: An RPG historian whose work is integral to the Old School Renaissance.

Compare and contrast the impressive and substantial work of these fan writers with the lightweights and pro authors favored in recent years by the SF-SJWs. The difference is downright risible.

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Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Fan Artist

Preliminary recommendations for the Best Fan Artist category.

Karezoid

rgus

Matthew Callahan

Disse86

Darkcloud013

UPDATE: It appears Karezoid may be eligible for Best Professional Artist. If this proves to be the case, I will alter my recommendations for this category.