Well, if you’ve been following the Sad Puppies story, the votes are in. Rather than swallowing their pride and liking something on the merits, the Social Justice Warriors out of spite voted for no awards to be given in several categories.

Before the Hugos were a proxy for politics, they were about good science fiction. I’ve got a book on my shelf, or in a box, or maybe my brother has it, that is a compilation of Hugo winning stories from the ’50s and ’60s. Some of the stories are fantastic, amongst the greatest things I’ve ever read. Some aren’t all that great in my estimation, but they got the award because other people disagreed with me. It’s about the science fiction, not about the politics, right?

Even if it isn’t about the politics on the surface, it usually is in the end. It seems a group of people realized that A) it’s a major career boost to have that “Hugo Award Winning” on your dust jacket, and B) A relatively small group of people could swing the voting one way or another. And so the Hugos in recent years have gone to a small, poorly written, and overwhelmingly leftist set of stories.