by I never expect to wake up in the morning, head onto the internet, try to make overtures of peace to a crowd and get a passive-aggressive twitter rant directed my way. But by the same token, I’m not going to be unfair to John Scalzi here. I see what went on from his perspective, and I will be as fair as I can after being attacked by an extremely wealthy white guy with a lot of followers in public on the internet.
Yesterday, John Scalzi actually did something brilliant from a master persuasion perspective. I’m talking Scott Adams level mastery, where he used the “high road” technique to turn a situation which has a high potential to end in embarrassment for him, and turn it into a huge win no matter what the outcome.
On his blog, he made the announcement that he’s withdrawing from the Dragon Award nominations. This is his second year, and his second withdrawal, let’s keep in mind for reference, as a lot of people’s memories are short. The reason was stated as follows:
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.
I’ve been pretty active with the Dragon Awards and what’s been going on there. I saw a total of one finalist doing this, one which, if it had been ignored as was his original plan, actually wouldn’t have done much in that regard, but this is a nice way of framing the high road to make Mr. Scalzi look very reasonable to an outside observer who barely knows what this is and has a cursory understanding of what the Dragon Awards are.
To back up for a moment, the Dragon Awards are a reaction to a political “us vs. them” movement in science fiction writing. One expressly designed to take political “us vs. them” out of the equation and just have as many fans as possible vote for what they consider best fiction. The reaction was to, actually, John Scalzi and a few of his others, who had and have a monopoly on the Hugo Award, run by a much smaller convention that Dragon*Con, where they would award themselves for their political message fiction year after year, and ignore quality, fun fiction in the field. That crowd kept mocking “make your own award then,” and so, someone did.
This is still master persuasion, because Scalzi’s target audience isn’t the people who are in the know. It’s the people who barely heard of this, clicked to see what’s going on, and are trying to get an impression. While he’s certainly guilty of the “us vs. them” he pretends to scoff at, to a random onlooker, they only understand heated politics, someone taking the high road. It’s beautiful.
I can only speculate at Mr. Scalzi’s true objectives here. It isn’t to stop or shun “us vs. them” politics. Despite a lot of his vocal opponents saying that this is his cowardice in that he was going to lose and didn’t want that egg on his face, I’m not sure that’s the case. It doesn’t ring true, because if he mobilized his fan base to vote, it would be difficult to stop him.
This action can only amplify the “us vs them” politics, however. What it did in reality was signal to other writers that are in his circle that this is the “wrong” award and that they should form a soft-boycott of it (not using the term boycott because their boycotting something as big as Dragon*Con would be a bad look). We’ll see anyone of a certain political persuasion in the field dropping out shortly now, because of a perceived pressure on the internet that they’re in the wrong space, with the wrong audience watching. At the very least, it’ll cause those authors to keep quiet about it, and will at least, in the short term, diminish the award’s prestige.
Which I believe is the intention. Tor Books, Scalzi’s publisher, owns the Nebulas and Hugos. They pump these awards and talk about them constantly, and as a big publisher under the umbrella of mega-corporate MacMillan, that does a lot for public perception. As of this writing, Tor.com, their “online news” portion which is highly respected in the field, wrote zero posts about the Dragon Awards, even though one of their top authors was nominated. That’s what makes this look fishy to anyone who digs into it and gives a red flag to what Mr. Scalzi was saying on his blog ringing false. There is a vested interest by his publisher to make sure this award, one that is open to all fans via popular vote and not easily controllable, does not gain further traction or prestige. Their entire establishment of book narrative is at risk by the Dragon Award’s mere existence.
Naturally, what Mr. Scalzi didn’t take into account, or perhaps didn’t care about, was the fact that multiple smaller authors get hurt by his proclamation. Some on his side of the political aisle who received a nomination out of reader demand now feel foolish, and are linked by the “us vs. them” political crowd, with people they’re not supposed to be associated with. The association game is big with this crowd, because politics transcend all thought, and if you’re associated with the wrong people, that’s about the worst crime you can have in this business. It is a petty, high school, Mean Girls-esque clique for those who are not privy to the inside of this small publishing niche. It’s really that bad.
But all this wouldn’t have mattered. If Mr. Scalzi had left it there, he would have had a beautiful message, and he probably would have succeeded in tarnishing this award, slowing its progress for years, and hurting the independent writers down ballot of whom he doesn’t approve or want to gain any traction in the business.
Instead, he took to twitter, delivering a couple posts that were direct shots at your humble Hispanic independent journalist. He continued that later on in a rant which he framed as “marketing” – but in those tweets, he made very clear signals: we need to shun THEM. The “us vs. them” thing he claimed to want to stop was shown to be a complete farce, and it nullified any good will that any person doing a cursory search would have gotten from his blog post. And now, as I said before, those tensions are amplified, as he’s used his privileged platform to attack independent writers. What it’s going to do as an end result, is make the Dragons much bigger because now a lot of people have a vested interest in making this political, and that was started by Mr. Scalzi’s post.
And that’s where his persuasion tactic breaks down. If he kept to his own narrative, it would have really been a masterful job, but since he apparently couldn’t help but go attack writers who shouldn’t even be garnering his attention from his position, it’s effectively nullified, or perhaps amplified the opposite of his stated or what I consider to be his true objective. We’ll see how this progresses over the next few days but what I expect to see is: 1. Authors getting loud and calling foul on Scalzi 2. Authors downstream of Scalzi feeling pressure to drop out of the Dragons and signaling who’s team they are on themselves 3. Major escalation into politics that pushes these stories into mainstream news.
It’s definitely not a good thing for anyone in the field, and sadly, it started with Mr. Scalzi. Some of us are just here trying to win a Dragon Award and make our way in this very difficult business. Thanks, multimillionaire ivory tower author, for making it harder on us.
(I know a lot of my readers are looking for what happened and how Mr. Scalzi attacked me yesterday – I’ll get to that in a separate post. This needed to be discussed first because it’s very interesting for the genre. Thank you all for being here and for your relentless support. It means the world to me. – Jon)
Good post. I belong to SFWA, not sure why, except it was something I wanted to do, and since I was making the money, why not. But to me the Nebulas just aren’t that prestigious any more, just like the Hugos. Some of there winners have been embarrassments (the dino porn), while I have often only read one of the nominees across the entire ballet (Chuck Gannon). I wasn’t involved in cons until recent years, just buying and reading several thousand scifi and fantasy books, then selling a lot of them myself. I remember the Hugo and Nebula as being marks for must read books. Now they are marks for books I have to research more before I spend my money on them. Many of my fans have stated, in response to my blog on the Dragons last year, that they hadn’t even realized that the Hugos were still a thing. To then they aren’t, and these are the people who buy a lot of books. I think, the Dragons will grow to become a premier award, just because they are truly inclusive in a way that the more esablished awards pretend to be.
Thanks Doug, much appreciated.I think it’ll take 3-4 years for the Dragons to get there, these things take a lot more time than folk realize. Culture is slow to shift. The reason the Sad Puppies failed is cuz they went at it 2-3 years and gave up. You can’t do that. Entertainment is an attrition game.
Scalzi? High road? Not so much.
But since you are unfamiliar with him, good on you for giving him the benefit of the doubt, Jon.
I’m familiar. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. It’s the Christian way to do things.
+1
The biggest problem with Scalzi has always been that he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. He is so in love with the sound of his own voice, with his own perceived cleverness that he has to just keep talking.
I think he does more damage to himself these days, than anyone else has ever done.
//One expressly designed to take political “us vs. them” out of the equation and just have as many fans as possible vote for what they consider best fiction.//
Really? because:
1. wouldn’t they publicise it more if they wanted as many fans as possible to vote?
2. wasn’t Brian Niemeier claiming the other day that the Dragons were in imminent danger of being swamped by SJWs? Was he wrong/exaggerating?
3. wouldn’t they have a voting system that was less prone to being gamed*?
4. wouldn’t the whole process be a lot more transparent?
Whatever their intention was, they don’t seem to have achieved taking the “us vs them” out of it. And last time I checked Brian N is still claiming all sorts of evil SJW plots are afoot.
*[note, that isn’t saying that the system has been gamed by any political grouping or individual – just that there is very little to stop it if somebody did so]
1. It’s publicized fine. Everyone knows about it in the SF community.
2. I’m not Brian. Go bug him about what he says.
3. It’s not prone to being gamed.
4. I wish I had this too if just for metrics because I would like to know how many votes I need to get to win safely. I’m a stats guy at heart.
The us vs. them was amplified by your boy Scalzi. I tried. And I still haven’t said bad things about him. Happy to forgive and forget like always, but people just double down on being awful to me. You’re actually one of the few who has shifted and started talking to me like a human.
You get what you give.
I only give love. 🙂
Of course that’s why my readership keeps growing!
1. “everyone” is a big exaggeration there Jon. Lots of chatter and discussion about it in the Superversive, Pulp Rev, Puppy spaces (which is fine – I’m not complaining about that) but not much beyond that. Minimal outreach from Dragon Con to Dragon Con attendees as far as I can see and communication from the official site is weak. Heck, I had a full list of nominees up on my website before they did!
2. My point is that a notable nominee was claiming that the Dragon Awards were somehow political. You aren’t John Scalzi either, so it isn’t like you have some fundamental objection to commenting on other people’s views.
3. It is currently set up so that somebody with multiple email addresses can vote multiple times. It would be trivially easy to game if voting numbers are low. It would be cost some money to game if voting numbers are higher but there is substantial evidence of authors doing so to manipulate Amazon rankings. [NOTE: not claiming or insinuating that this happening currently]
//The us vs. them was amplified by your boy Scalzi.//
Which was initiated by Brian N and Brian N is still engaging in that tactic. Note John Scalzi is DEFINITELY not using politics to try and get votes in the Dragon Award, while Brian N definitely is.
Yes, I get that you aren’t going to criticize Brian because he is an ally but let’s be real about where the issue is here. If you want the Dragons to be something other than ‘us v them’ then John Scalzi isn’t the problem you’ve got to solve. He’s already got the awards he wants.
If he does, them why do you care what Jon is saying about Ol’ Blue Lips?
1. It’s in locus. your hate site posts about it almost daily that you go to. It’s two years, lots of people know about it. Probably more than the hugos which have been around for decades. In 5 years it will definitely be more. This is a long game. You don’t win in 2-3 years and call it a day. Some of the commentators are dumb about that but such is our society in general. That’s why I’m going to win, because I’ve a 5-10 year plan, not a 3 month plan.
2. John Scalzi personally attacked me on twitter, I am responding to attacks. Otherwise he would not be a topic on my blog. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about him before.
3. It’s way easier to go to your friend and be like “sign up vote” than it is to set up email addresses and go through that. If someone has that much time on their hands, please send them my way so that I can put them to work marketing for me. I am by myself, I do not have a corporation or anyone else working for me drumming things up behind the scenes like big publishers do. I need all the help I can get.
“Brian started this battle…” vs. there’s a war going on for a long time. And yes, I’m not interested in criticizing Brian but that whole argument, while brilliant persuasion as I mentioned hat tip to him, is disingenuous. If Scalzi wouldn’t attack the crap out of people for years, Brian wouldn’t have started the battle in the ongoing war.
I’ll just put these two points together as I think my response is similar to them both:
// …there’s a war going on for a long time.
&
2. John Scalzi personally attacked me on twitter, I am responding to attacks. //
Yes, there are long term cultural and ideological conflicts. The question is do you want the Dragon Awards to be a battleground in that conflict? Whatever you think of John Scalzi or what his motives may have been, he has stepped away.
//3. It’s way easier to go to your friend and be like “sign up vote” than it is to set up email addresses and go through that//
True and that has an upper limit of how many friends you have (or friends of friends). If the awards are low profile and low stakes (i.e. just a bit of fun and fan participation) then nobody is going to cheat anyway.
If the award is higher stakes (i.e. it is perceived as giving a book some advantage, rightly or wrongly) or is seen as being some major battle ground of ideology then the equation changes. And note, it doesn’t even need to happen very much for the possibility to create mistrust and disenchantment with the process.
Did you read this piece about people possibly using click farms to scam Amazon ratings? https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/scammers-break-the-kindle-store/
Gaughran claims you can buy 1000 Kindle Unlimited borrows from various sources for $200. So, somebody with some spare money, a big ego and no scruples could probably game the Dragons without much in the way of popular support or other resources*. **
*[Yes, I am guessing but remember to win you just need more votes than the next highest, because their are multiple nominees in a first-past-the-post to win you don’t need anything like 50% of the votes to win]
**[I wrote more here but it began to look too much like a ‘how-to’. Again, I’m niot saying anybody IS doing this. Possibly not worth the cost currently]