Great, middle-of-the-road take on the Hugos & Sad/Rabid Puppies “controversy”.
When I was studying at Christendom College, I had to read a book called Piers Plowman. It was part of the core curriculum that all students had to study, a set of 24 separate classes (plus the math, science, and language requirements) that comprised the entirety of the freshman and sophomore years, as well as some of the junior year. This might sound a bit heavy, but it was actually very efficient and allowed a lot of information in both the lower and upper courses. All professors knew what their students had covered, and so little to no time was wasted on remedial material. This meant more in-depth study of a type normally seen only in graduate courses. With a few exceptions, we were rarely bored.
Piers Plowman was one of those exceptions. The only reason it isn’t a cure for insomnia is because of the torturous pain we…
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The Improbable Author 
For your info, I took the liberty to forward this to the Orange Country Science Fiction Club. I’m Conservative, but there are a lot of Liberals in it and sometimes we argue. Told them I would not get into a political mishmash, but this was interesting I personally know several authors I’ve corresponded with who were personally insulted about their hard-line mil sic fi as right wing killers. Some were combat vets. I was fortunate, didn’t see combat, but was under another constant stress, air defense command ops…60 years ago.Good luck.Gordon Levine
I’m glad you liked it. I have a no-politics rule on the Novel Ninja blog, because politics (as proven by this controversy) will dominate a discussion and I wanted to provide a resource blog about writing. That’s why I didn’t write one on Sad Puppies in previous years, and why I took this particular approach this year.
Let me know what the club thinks, even if it’s horrible. 🙂
Thanks for posting this, Tom. You’re right; it’s a great middle-of-the-road piece that I found myself nodding along in agreement with as I read it. I’ve always been a big fan of “it’s all about the story.”