Quick Hugo thought

If none of this makes any sense to you, lemme suggest counting yourself lucky and not looking into it any further.

Some folk out there seem to be hemming and hawing between (a) No-Awarding the Puppies selections or (b) No-Awarding every Puppy-dominated category, since it would be totally unfair to give "The Day the World Turned Upside Down" a Hugo by default, and pretty unfair to give e.g. The Goblin Emperor a Hugo with reduced competition.

I'm hemming and possibly even hawing too, but I know exactly what would let me make up my mind: releasing the full nomination data. 

That way you could see who else could have been on the ballot. Then the procedure's simple: you construct a virtual ballot from a Puppy-free world (the kind of Stalinist disappearing we SJWs lurve) and make your choice. If your selection from the virtual ballot is on the real ballot as well, you vote for them above No Award; otherwise you No Award the whole category.

But we don't have the full nomination data, right?

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Also: Nate Silver has predicted a hung Hugo in the novel category, which means we're likely to see Skin Game forming a coalition novel with Ancillary Sword ... if they can reach an agreement. (Not really).

Elsewhere: "Instead of a sword, I carry two sets of tactical laser turrets." A frosty read-through of Puppy nominees by secritcrush.

Earlier: my sample proposal for reforming the voting system for the Hugo Awards. And possibly for the UK Parliament, now that I think about it. (Basically I've solved everything? Anyone want to help me work out the details? Any nifty coders, for example?)

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PS: Maybe it's a pity that the Hugo nomination rules are likely to be altered to reduce the influence of slates. Each iteration of the Sad Puppies campaign has been a little different, and it might be interesting to watch future mutations under the twin suns of Outsider Cachet and Basic Decency. Could they perhaps scrape together a genuinely diverse slate next year in terms of authorship, while still promoting mainly tie-in fiction, military science fiction, and conservative and/or libertarian science fiction? Could they exorcise Rabid Puppies and GamerGate? They are only a few tweaks away from someone like me giving them the time of day -- reading their nominations with a carjack-opened mind -- though I'm dubious whether they could make those tweaks without alienating their core supporters.