I've been trying to think of a way to talk about what is going on with the 2015 Hugo awards, but I'm just going to post as neutrally as I can, and let things fall where they may. If this has been talked about somewhere else, let me know and remove this thread. If this has been discussed in the actual intro/outro to any episodes, please indicate, and I will listen. I'm still catching up.
There was a movement among anti-liberal groups on the internet to stuff the ballot box of the Hugos to promote anti-liberal authors and their works in "retaliation" to what they perceived as the liberal elite effectively blocking any authors who were not LBGTQ, or did not have LBGTQ representation in their stories from the Hugos. This movement was called Sad Puppies, and it succeeded. Many accounts were made, and many votes were cast without the voters ever even reading word one of the works they were promoting. Many of the works are by authors who have traditionally conservative views, and many people are upset about this.
Defenders of the Sad Puppies movement state that if the "other side" wanted to avoid this, they just needed to drum up more support for their preferred author, and that their movement was, at its base, a movement to show how broken the Hugo Awards system is. They refer to voting campaigns by authors such as John Scalzi, and claim that their movement was no different. The Hugos have always been basically a popularity contest, often won by either authors that voters recognize, authors that have put together the best publicity campaign, or authors that have certain cache with the voting population.
I'm wondering how Escape Artists, an organization that has been outwardly progressive both in the past and recently, will be dealing with this situation come Hugo Month, considering some of the entries in the Short Story category are written by some allegedly ballot stuffed authors.