The Sad/Rabid Puppies have already moved to threats. That’s good. It gets everything right out into the open, so we all know the grounds we’re operating on here.

Specifically, if fans use their fully-legal voting rights to vote NO AWARD in any Puppy-controlled Hugo Award category – something which I strongly urge be voted in every such category – and thereby undo the 10%-of-voters gaming-of-the-system that the Puppies engineered, herr oberpuppyführer Vox Day says:

If No Award takes a fiction category, you will likely never see another award given in that category again. The sword cuts both ways, Lois. We are prepared for all eventualities.

Now, this is what I expect out of this sort of crowd, by which I mean, the sort of crowd who thinks that Naziism has more “truth” to it than, say, equality for women – and let me assure you I am not exaggerating, let me quote him for you on that:

National Socialism is not only human logic, it is considerably more logical, and truthful, than Communism, feminism, or secular Zionism. That was part of the tragedy of Germany’s descent into it. Unlike the first two ideologies, it actually functioned effectively.

But lets get back on track, and look at those numbers above. I knew the Puppies bloc – the bloc voting their slate – was a minority in fandom. It’s only yesterday that I found out how small. They’re ten percent.

Ten percent voting in a block got this motley gang of white supremacists, vicious homophobes, misogynistic GamerGate opportunists, and innocent-bystanders-slash-human-shields complete control over most of the fiction awards.

And now we’ve been told that if we don’t sit there, ignore our legal voting options, and give them the trophies that 90% of fans did not want them to have at all… they’ll destroy the awards forever, or at least try.

It reeks a bit of desperation. I don’t think they understood that NO AWARD is a real thing, and now they’re going with threats, and claims of omnipotence, at least in planning. I think the NO AWARD movement has them destabilised.

But even without that, the rules can and will be changed. It takes two years, but unless they’re going to brownshirt-up the business meetings for the next two Worldcons, those rules changes are going to happen and this is going to be stopped…

…but then again, they do say they’re prepared for all eventualities.

Maybe they’ve tipped their hand. Maybe brownshirting up the business meeting is exactly what they mean to do. Come in a bloc, ram through round one of any rule changes they might want (like getting rid of NO AWARD, perhaps?), and most importantly, block any attempt to work around their awards manipulation. That’d be real high on their agenda, given that they’ve already announced they’re going to do all this again next year.

They are all about the politics, after all.

Maybe we all better be ready to go to the business meeting. Turnout is usually small. Maybe this year, it needs to be large. Maybe it needs to be very large. I don’t know what, yet, can be done to stop slates – but something has to happen, or it will be slate vs. slate as far as the eye can see, because political parties work, whether you like it or not. And I’d prefer rules changes to diminish the effectiveness of slates to a slate-vs-slate non-solution.

So I think we have two agenda items:

  1. This year, vote NO AWARD.
  2. Come to the business meeting at Worldcon, and stay there, to make sure it sticks.

eta: The Guide to WSFS Business Meetings. Read this before the meeting!

eta2: This post has a follow-up, here.