OH CHRISTOPHER PRIEST NO

[major_clanger]

It really is very tempting to have a T-shirt made up for Eastercon:

George RR Martin
is not your bitch
but Charlie Stross
is so my Internet Puppy

Christopher Priest is not very happy about the Arthur C Clarke Award 2012 shortlist. He is entitled to his opinion about the writers who have been shortlisted, and indeed it's clear that autopope regards the description of him as one who "…writes like an internet puppy" as a badge of honour destined, if he has his way, to grace the covers of his next half-dozen books. I am less sanguine about the comments regarding the Clarke Award judges, four of whom I know. Questioning the judgement of book award juries is perfectly common; calling their fundamental competence into question is quite something else. Priest also seems to have very little understanding of how a juried award works; if what he says represents his views on the matter, I doubt if anyone will be inviting him onto a book jury any time soon.

An RAF phrase that has always stuck with me is "having a funny five minutes", a description of someone Losing It that conveys the view that this is one of those unusual departures from common sense that we are all prone to now and again. I'd like to think that Priest - someone I've always found to be very pleasant in person - was having a FFM here, but the piece is too reasoned in its malice to make me confident that he was.

Doubtless somebody is drafting the '2012 Shortlist Controversy' section for the Wikipedia entry as we speak.

Comments

[were-gopher.livejournal.com]

Not so much "saucer of milk dear?" as lets arrange United Dairies to deliver a tanker to his door.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Just how does an Internet puppy write? What does that even mean?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Wow. That was like watching Treebeard working himself up into a fury.

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

So what is an internet puppy ? And do we get any other internet animals ?

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

I'm sure all the judges will go: "Gosh, thanks for pointing that out, so you have a form letter rady for us to sign."

It's quite extraordinary. Awards always have omissions and inclusions that you preface any discussion of with "in my opinion..."

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

One starts by expecting a reasoned argument, but this rapidly becomes a sermon of puritan intolerance without it being clear what Priest's criterion of excellence is. He's clearly riled by his treatment by the Oxford Literary Festival, but tone and content suggest Priest is difficult to please. The attack on the judges is entirely unexpected and damages his case.

[andrewducker]

I also have very little understanding of how a juried award works. Can you point me towards a decent explanation?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Generally the idea is that you thrash out a shortlist between you, on the agreed basis that whilst you may not all agree, you will disagree in a civilised fashion and present a united front when it comes to announcing the shortlist and, later, the result.

What you do not do is throw your teddy out the cot when you can't chivvy the rest of the jury into agreeing with you. If you want to take part in an award jury, you have to accept that short of the rest of the jury doing something totally mad - and we are talking 'we must have Rick Santorum's autobiography on the ballot' levels of deranged here - you bite your tongue and go with the collective decision.

[andrewducker]

That makes sense to me. Thank you.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Unsurprisingly it's very well written - I think some of those précis will hang visibly over the books in question while the jury (and fandom jn general) discusses them - and it will be difficult to forget which is his preferred candidate.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I hope that the authors concerned are cherry picking the best bits to put on the covers of future editions. The most negative review of one of my RPGs was by far the funniest, so much so that I quoted a large chunk on the blurb of the supplement.

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

Yes, this. I feel way more interested in reading Chris Priest's selection than the official short list and as a result I've bought six books I wouldn't otherwise have looked at.

I think anything that enables science fiction writers to starve a little less slowly is good although I suspect the royalties on my purchases probably barely going to cover a few tins of baked beans.

I don't think he's said anything worse than is said about the Mann-Booker and Orange selections each year. The only difference is that the people on this jury are people most of us know and like.

Knowing the amount of horse trading that goes on with any committee decision, I suspect that individual committee members probably wouldn't have chosen the official list if they had free choice themselves.

I suspect that if Arthur C Clarke was still alive, he would have picked an entirely different list. Since he was a very traditional writer even by the standards of the day it would probably be closer to the more trad jury list than Priest's selection.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

"Clarke is an over-rated writer – his work is redolent of a naive romanticism, made palatable by homely similes, and simple, logical plotting."

(Declaration of interest - I am Chair of the Judges)

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

I shall probably get drummed out of fandom for this but I agree up to a point with this. The point where I depart is that this is a hindsight view. Golden age writers such as Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein were as good as they could be at the time and modern genre writers stand on their shoulders.

Criticising Clarke for being a product of his times is a bit like criticising "Clarissa" for being too long and a bit challenged on the plot front. It's perfectly true but not terribly valid.

I think it is a huge challenge to administer an award in his name when I suspect that Sir Arthur might have had trouble recognising many of the books submitted as being in the genre. I have admired Priest's books for years but it had never occurred to me that they might be science fiction.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying I disagree with the quotation. Oddly enough I've been sidetracked by reading through a piece I wrote on Priest's criticisms of sf, which I mostly agree with. If memory serves this was a comment from about 1979.

"What would Sir Arthur think?" is a question I might well ask the judges, but they have to decide which they think is the best book on the shortlist - irrespective of track records, community responses or Clarkean values. Priest's novels almost all engage with sf novels, and put a twist on the genre. (Add "As you know, Bob", to taste.)

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

This isn't at all about whether Priest is right or wrong, though. He could be completely, 100% correct, about the merits of the various novels (as if there were some global scale of novel quality), and he would still come over as a petulant child. Furthermore, he's spent some time on this -- time enough to have made a positive choice not to argue his position purely on the merits of the text. I haven't read Tepper's novel; based on other evidence I'd expect it to be terribly dreary, but Priest has not demonstrated that it's poor. I can imagine a good SF novel that's a quest story with a talking horse and puns on the word 'Neigh'. (Indeed, I thought Shrek2 was a pretty good film and I'm pretty sure it has all of those).

Gosh I think it was a lot easier to have a good rant in a fanzine.

[gaspode.livejournal.com]

Sadly it's too late to put a back print on the con T-Shirts but I so would if I could :) Gaspode.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Are there any t-shirt printers in the dealer room with their kit along? I know Scott and Jane Dennis usually bring at least a printer with transfers to any con they've got a table at, even if they're primarily dealing in pre-made shirts and advance mail orders at the con.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

For other reasons I'd like to know if this is the case and what the deal would be. Anyone know?

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

I'm not making EasterCon (again) this year, but I'll buy one of those t-shirts off you if you get them made.

[Edited to fix typo.]

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

I have great respect and liking for Chris and, indeed, for most of the people he mentions. In ways, it's not a bad thing to have A Massive Row (Tm) before an awards ceremony: it gets everyone talking about it, and stirs up interest and controversy, neither of which are bad things when it comes to SF. Having been on last year's jury (I will be on next year's as well, but am skipping a year), my experience of the Clarke's was pretty positive: everyone was rigorous and took the selection process very seriously. It was a smooth ride in that we turned out to be in remarkable accord, but I have no reason to think that this year's jurors would have behaved any differently: knowing them, I believe that they did not, and would have been as competent as they have always proved themselves to me.

There are always going to be differences of opinion and while I respect Chris' opinion, he can be in a minority: he was once so critical of a short story of mine that we workshopped that I couldn't look at it for a year. Then I finally thought 'Oh fuck it,' sent it to a magazine who accepted it immediately and I've just had a request for a reprint. This doesn't mean that Chris is wrong, btw, just that his literary opinion is not universal - and indeed, I do not know of anyone whose opinion is.

It would be disingenuous of me to comment further, because I am not familiar at all with this year's list. I don't think a strong expression of views (I originally wrote 'ranting') does much harm in the long run, and may have positive side effects.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

The two times I've met him CP has indeed been a very genial guy. It's a toys/pram thing. It'll pass, and he may regret it later, but darn it "internet puppy" deserves to stick around forever.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I've posted separately about this, but I've always thought that it helps, before spinning off on a massive rant, to consider whether your opinion might be coloured, even a tiny bit, by your own personal interests. And a piece of very useful civil service phraseology comes to mind... 'I know that the fact that your own novel wasn't nominated has nothing to do with this, but, the way this is currently drafted, people might erroneously conclude that you have a chip on your shoulder'.

[coth.livejournal.com]

Feorag beat you to it:

http://www.zazzle.co.uk/internet_puppy_t_shirt_tshirt-235730813931635704

[(Anonymous)]

As far as I know (which isn't very), Chris Priest isn't active enough on the InterNet to be considered "an InterNet Puppy", but if he were I think he would be. The definition, I suppose, is something like "entirely too 'awww... cute' to swat, no matter how obnoxious". (Actually, I think the Poster Child for that would be John Scalzi, who I think has chimed-in on this matter, and whose "obnoxiousness" generally consists of being as absolutely practical as a telephone pole. (Actually, I rarely disagree with Scalzi, but when I do it's impossible to present a logical defense of my position. Priest seems no more fortunate.)