Good thing 1984 wasn't a true science fiction novel because up is down and losing is winning

Voting has ended for this year's Hugo Awards. However, that doesn't mean the pups' Hugo positioning is anywhere near finished. As a result the genre is currently in a 1984-style doublespeak world where up is down and, most importantly, losing is being redefined as winning.

At least, that's my take of the latest comments from puppydom.

As has been reported at length, the main premise of the puppies' Hugo Award tantrum was that science fiction and fantasy had moved away from from the golden days of old. To quote puppy ringleader Brad Torgersen:

"The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?

"There’s a sword-swinger on the cover, but is it really about knights battling dragons? Or are the dragons suddenly the good guys, and the sword-swingers are the oppressive colonizers of Dragon Land?"

For Torgersen and the other puppies, the original sin of today's science fiction and fantasy is that it's too political. That SF/F stories are no longer merely good yarns but also include lots of politics and deeper meaning and unsettling literary crap.

Which is completely inane, because genre fiction has always been political. And literary. And pulpy. And every type of story in between.

I mean, does this mean 1984 wasn't a true science fiction novel? Or that the countless other literary and political-themed novels which won the Hugo Award don't belong in our genre?

The answer to these questions should be obvious.

The problem for the puppies is they miscalculated about the outrage arising from their actions. As record numbers of people turned out to vote in the Hugos, the pups realized they'd overreached. It's one thing to organize block voting on a preliminary ballot which few people actually take part in. But not being humiliated by a vote of "No Award" when thousands of people are taking part — that's a much harder accomplishment.

Because of this some of the puppies are now saying that they want "No Award" to win. That this will prove their point about the Hugos. Adam-Troy Castro suspects a conspiracy theory. Others I've heard from wonder if this is part of the pups' long-term plan to destroy the SF/F genre.

I don't believe there's any conspiracy or long-term plan at work here. Instead, the pups are panicked. Their little protest has galvanized the genre against them. If anything, their support in the genre is weaker than it was before they began their Hugo campaign.

They know this. They won't admit it, but they know it.

At least, that's my take on the whining we're hearing from their doghouse.

We won't know the ultimate outcome of all this until the Hugo Awards are announced in a few weeks. But just because the pups say losing is now winning doesn't make is so. And no amount of 1984 doublespeak can change this truth.

Story of the week: "Calved" by Sam J. Miller

I used to review short stories. Critiqued a ton of them on the sadly defunct The Fix, back when Eugie Foster edited that wonderful website of short story reviews. Also reviewed them on this site, where I tried to bring attention to great stories by recommending short stories worth reading each week.

Then I slacked off. Which is shame on me, because I still read so many short stories. But instead of sharing them I stayed silent.

No longer. Inspired by the superb work K. Tempest Bradford is doing at io9 to highlight genre short fiction I'm again picking stories of the week. And my first is "Calved" by Sam. J. Miller in the September 2015 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.

Sam J. Miller is a new author whose stories have been published in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Shimmer and many other places. He's also been nominated for a Nebula Award, won a Shirley Jackson Award, and has a novel coming out next year.

His first story for Asimov's is a near-future tale set on Earth after a global environmental disaster. The narrator, Dom, is an ice-grunt, a poor immigrant cutting ice from glaciers for use as drinking water around the world. When he's not working under horrific conditions on an illegal ice boat he lives on the floating Swedish city of Qaanaaq, where he battles those who hate him because he is poor and doesn't speak the city's main language.

If this sounds like a familiar tale of an immigrant being exploited and discriminated against, that's because it is. But Miller inverts the trope by having Dom be an immigrant from New York City, who fled the USA right before the environment there went to hell and back.

If the plot I've described was all there was to "Calved," then what we'd have would be the set-up for a decent science fiction story, a tale which offers nothing more than a cautionary warning to readers against becoming too comfortable with the benefits they've been blessed with by both history and power. But the heart of Miller's story doesn't come from the backstory described above. Instead, the story derives its true power, as do all great stories, from the relationships between the characters.

You see, Dom is trying and failing to maintain a relationship with his son. Because he must spend so much time at sea harvesting ice, his son has grown up without him. Now a teenager, his son is beginning to see Dom as the rest of the citizens of Qaanaaq see him — a poor piece of trash not worth saving or helping.

Dom is desperate to change his son's opinion. And to accomplish this he ... does something which will haunt me for years to come.

When I finished this story I wanted to scream. I wanted to punish Miller for writing something which so gut my emotions. I wanted to hug him for creating a story so beautifully captivating and so perfectly devastating to read.

"Calved" by Sam. J. Miller is one of the year's best stories and will likely be on my Hugo and Nebula Award short list. Seek this story out and read it.

Do you believe in miracles?

So DeepSouthCon announces John C. Wright will be the guest of honor at their 2016 convention in Roswell, Georgia. Which is the convention's choice, this being a free country and all and people being allowed to say what they want and honor any author they desire.

Funny thing, though. Not only is it a free country and you can say and associate with anyone you like but other people can do the same. And if you honor an author known for attacking others and spewing hate all over the genre, there's a chance people may decide not to associate with your convention. Or spend their money registering for your convention.

All of which brings up an interesting coincidence — the 2016 DeepSouthCon has been cancelled. According to an announcement on their website, the people running the con "decided that it was no longer feasible to host the convention."

I have no proof the selection of Wright as guest of honor and the cancelling of the convention six months later are in any way related. These facts may simply be two isolated events swirling in the chaos we delightfully call existence.

But this is still an interesting coincidence. Or miracle, depending on your worldview.

Stick a fork in the pup's Tor boycott because their hushpuppy is done

Do you understand math? Can you agree that 1679 is larger than 1652?

If this numerical fact seems obvious, then you can easily see why the puppies' boycott of Tor books has failed.

Earlier this month I tracked the sales of a sample of ten book titles published by Tor Books. My desire was to see if the puppies' boycott of Tor was having any effect on the publisher's sales.

You can see the titles I tracked, and how I tracked the sales, in my original post or by looking at the endnote below.

But the flaw in my analysis was that I could only present two weeks of sales data since the boycott began on June 19. As a result, some people rightly said it was too early to tell if the boycott was failing or succeeding.

After examining two additional weeks of sales data it appears my initial analysis was correct. This new data shows that for the five weeks prior to the boycott starting on June 19, the total weekly sales average for these Tor titles was 1652 books per week. For those same Tor titles, their total weekly average sales for the last four weeks of the boycott has been 1679 books per week.

So on average, Tor's total sales for these titles are up slightly since the boycott started.

Here's a chart tracking the weekly sales of these Tor novels. The yellow line represents the average weekly sales of these novels prior to the start of the boycott. The red line is the weekly total sales numbers. You can see total sales for each individual week by hovering over the red line.

Total Weekly Sales for Selected Tor Titles

Red: Total sales per week for selected Tor titles (see endnote for titles)
Yellow: Average sales per week for selected Tor titles for five weeks prior to boycott

As you can see, there's a lot of variation in the week-to-week sales total for these selected Tor novels. That's normal for the sales of any publisher's titles. But what we don't see is a sharp dropoff like you'd expect if this boycott was successful. Instead, the sales are continuing to group around the average weekly sales Tor saw before the boycott began.

And it's hard to argue with 1679 being larger than 1652. With the four-week post-boycott sales average for these Tor novels slightly higher than before the boycott, I don't see how anyone can say the boycott is succeeding.

Stick a fork in that puppy boycott, because their hushpuppy campaign is done.

Endnote

For this analysis I tracked the sales for the following Tor novels over nine-week period (five weeks prior to the boycott and four weeks after it started). The sales were tracked with Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 60% of actual physical book sales.

• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (mass market paperback)
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (trade paperback)
• Willful Child by Steven Erikson (hardcover)
• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (hardcover)
• Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson (mass market paperback)
• Lock In by John Scalzi (hardcover)
• A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab (hardcover)
• The Just City by Jo Walton (hardcover)
• Like a Mighty Army by David Weber (mass market paperback)
• The Architect of Aeons by John C. Wright (hardcover)

It's extremely difficult to track every Tor novel on their large backlist so I selected these ten novels to demonstrate sales across a range of different publishing formats (hardcover, trade paperback and mass market paperback). All of these Tor titles had previously appeared on the Locus bestseller lists in the months before I began tracking their sales.

Obviously the best thing would be to have easy access to sales data for all Tor titles. But until this data is made available, I believe my analysis is the best way to track any effect the Tor boycott is having.

Tor's sales average also indicates the boycott is failing

Over on File 770 Mike Glyer wonders if the numbers I presented about the Tor boycott failing actually show the opposite. It's a good question to ask, especially if you only look at a week or two of Tor's sales.

However, comparing a single week's sales to another week's sales can be extremely misleading, especially since book sales fluctuate greatly on a week to week basis. 

A better way to look at this is to establish an average for Tor's sales prior to the boycott, which is what I tried to show by tracking five weeks of sales prior to the boycott's start on June 19. This five-week sales average was 1652 copies per week for the sample of books I tracked.

In the graph below, this pre-boycott sales average is illustrated by the yellow line. The red line tracks the week by week total sales of the books I tracked. As you can see, there was a dip in the last two weeks of the boycott, but the dip has yet to go below the average set in the previous five weeks. This is one of the reasons I said the boycott had failed.

Red: Total Sales per week
Yellow: Average sales for five weeks prior to boycott
Blue: Weekly sales without including Ender's Games sales

But looking only at total sales doesn't give the full picture of Tor's sales because the books in my sample were published in different formats, from expensive hardcovers to trade paperbacks to mass market paperbacks. If you want to determine if Tor's sales are truly falling, lumping all these different formats in together for a cumulative sales number doesn't strike me as the best way to go. After all, is it better for Tor to sell one $25 hardcover or one $6 mass market paperback? I'm guessing Tor would go with the hardcover sale.

In addition, the book which dropped the most during the two week boycott was Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, a strange title for the boycott to focus on since the author's politics are in line with many of the people calling for the boycott. 

It's because of variables such as these that I looked for overall patterns in Tor's sales with my analysis of their sales numbers. If the boycott was successful, you'd expect to see a sharp drop in sales across all titles, which is not what we're seeing here. Instead, what the numbers appear to show is random fluctuation which has yet to dip below the average for Tor's sales prior to the boycott.  In short, the pattern of sales we saw prior to the boycott is the pattern of sales we're seeing during the boycott.

Of course, it's possible the slight drop in sales the last two weeks will continue or increase. But that will only be evident after another few weeks of sales data come in.