Why no unsweet iced tea in Canada?

I was told something today which disturbed me to the bottom of my tea-drinking soul. I stopped by the Tim Hortons near work and ordered an unsweet iced tea. Turns out the store manager is Canadian and was amused by how many people in the United States drink unsweet iced tea.

"Did you know you can't even order unsweet iced tea in Canada," he said. "People wouldn't even know how to make it for you. All the iced tea in Canada is sweet."

I'm sure that last part was hyperbole, and mind you the manager wasn't hating on unsweet iced tea. After all, it's far more healthy than almost any other cold beverage aside from water.

But I'm now curious. Why is unsweet ice tea not a thing in Canada?

Novels worth reading, August 2015 edition

So far 2015 has been a very good year for genre reading. During my recent trip to Japan I read two novels which I highly recommend:

• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
• Vermilion: The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp by Molly Tanzer

Murakami's novel is obviously amazing, being recognized as a modern classic. But it's also an insightful, beautifully written science fiction story which dazzled me all the way to a very disturbing yet perfect ending. Tanzer's novel is one of the best first fantasy novels I've read this year and a fun, captivating story with a main character I loved. I definitely want to read more adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp.

Earlier this year I read Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings, which I also really enjoyed and highly recommend. The novel is a dynamic epic fantasy which avoids the cliches and inanities plaguing most epic fantasies, which are usually far from being at all associated with the word "dynamic." Hell, most epic fantasies wish they had even a little of Liu's ability at dynamic writing.

Let me repeat that word. Dynamic. Always wanted to use the word "dynamic" multiple times in a review.

I also recently read Marko Kloos' Frontlines series (Terms of Enlistment, Lines of Departure and Angles of Attack) and found it to be a good addition to the space opera genre. I'll definitely read more of the series when new editions are available. This is also a series which improves with progressing novels, with this year's Angles of Attack being my favorite.

I'm also currently reading or about to read the following novels:

• The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard
• Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas by Kazuki Sakuraba
• City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
• The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor

As a side note, I read Okorafor's Lagoon last year and really enjoyed it. I often dislike first-contact novels but Okorafor transcends that subgenre's usual cliches and melodrama by focusing instead on how human interactions would be challenged and changed by aliens. The novel was released last year in Europe but is only now available in the U.S. Highly recommended.

I'm also looking forward to a number of pending releases, including

• Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
• Empire Ascendant: Worldbreaker Saga #2 by Kameron Hurley

I'd love other recommendations of 2015 novels to read, or any good novels from previous years which I've missed. If you have any recs, let me know.

Update: I can't believe I forgot to mention Signal to Noise by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia. I really enjoyed the lyricism of this novel but had forgotten it came out this year, not in 2014. I also should have included The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi on my list of novels I'm currently reading or about to read.

Some very good points from a Sad Puppy

Nathaniel Givens supports the Sad Puppy goals but has major disagreements with some aspects of this year's campaign. He's also written a very good post pointing out these issues and making suggestions for next year's Sad Puppy slate:

I support the stated goals of Sad Puppies, and I hope they run the campaign again next year, but only on the following conditions:

1. Pick better books. Some of the picks were great. Others were… really not.
2. Pick the books for the right reasons: because the work is good, not because the author is important / wrote a lot / etc.
3. Make the pre-nomination process more transparent.
4. Do not ask for or notify any authors that their works will be included. This puts the authors in a terrible position and is not a standard practice.
5. In every category, nominate either 1-2 works or 8+ works. Doing this prevents the accusation of slate-voting and will also make it very unlikely that the Puppies will sweep any categories.
6. Tell people that this is the plan, and do so earlier.

If they don’t do this–and it looks like they won’t–then I’m going back to my default position: A pox on both your houses.

I agree with Givens that if the puppies did this then there would be far less backlash to their campaign. And I say that as someone who disagrees with slate voting and opposed this year's puppy slate along with their tactics and political views.

What outraged me the most about this year's puppy campaign is they blocked any non-slate stories or people from making the Hugo ballot in most categories. It was this fact which damned them in my eyes. Yes, I disagree with the puppies' political goals. But I've disagreed with many people in the genre and still enjoyed reading their stories and working with them.

As Givens states in his post, the problems with the puppies' campaign were revealed when The Three-Body Problem was initially denied a slot on the final ballot. When the novel made the ballot after another novel was withdrawn by its author, a number of the puppies said this was exactly the type of science fiction they want to see on the ballot.

So basically there was a novel many of the puppies felt should win a Hugo, and which many others in the genre felt the same about, and it nearly didn't make the ballot because of the puppy campaign. That, in a nutshell, is the problem with blindly voting for a slate of nominees.

I read all the works on the puppy slate and I agree with Givens that many of them were not Hugo worthy. That fact, along with people being outraged about the slate voting, caused the results we witnessed.

I doubt the puppies will listen to me but for what it's worth, Givens is correct. If next year's puppy campaign follows his advice, I imagine they'd be far more successful.

On the SF/F genre and a-holes

Shaun Duke raises a good point about the Hugo Award puppyfail:

Politics certainly figures into it, but, to be frank, most of the folks I know who dislike the puppies feel that way because the puppies are a-holes. We all have conservative friends and acquaintances who aren't a-holes, and we don't seem to have a big problem with them unless they're crazy bigots like VD. We have a problem with a-holes.

Amen. With an amen-caveat that most puppy supporters aren't a-holes and that conservatives don't have any particular stranglehold on being political a-holes. They don't. There are plenty of liberal and moderate a-holes in the world.

If you're a nice person and disagree with me about politics or the Hugos or science fiction or anything else, that's fine. We disagree. But we can still work together and share a drink together and discuss the issues together and enjoy the SF/F genre ... you guessed it, together.

But a-holes, they ruin life for everyone. They're the equivalent of scorched-earth warfare on interpersonal relationships. They burn everything down and dance in the ruins while somehow believing people love watching their pathetic little diarrhetic two-step.

The SF/F genre has long contained a-holes and will contain them long after this year's drama is forgotten. But no one in the genre will forget an a-hole.

And in this year's puppy drama, what people will truly remember are the a-holes.

So people in the SF/F genre, try your best to not be an a-hole.

The Hugo Awards go global in puppy rebuke

The 2015 Hugo Awards have been announced and the big winner was the science fiction and fantasy genre. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and translated by Ken Liu became the first translated novel to win Best Novel. In the Best Novelette category, the winner is “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt and translated by Lia Belt.

Otherwise, the fiction and editing categories were dominated by No Award. Look at the Hugo vote statistics and the rebuke to the puppy slate becomes even clearer. Exactly 5,950 people voted in this year's Hugos. Of those, it appears around a tenth or less consistently voted for the puppy slates.

A tenth. One out of ten. Enough people to game the nominating process but not enough to do anything more.

Except, the puppies did do something. They created a backlash to their antics. They helped Worldcon and the Hugos go global for the first time. They reminded people that our genre cares about the Hugos. And they inspired more people to take part in Hugo voting, a trend that hopefully will last for years to come.

The puppies changed the genre. But not in the way they intended. And they've now revealed in the vote tally how small their movement actually is.

I hope this is the end of all pup-related silliness. I also want to thank the puppies for what they helped accomplish.