soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2022-04-15 08:19 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2022-04-15 08:19 pm
The Complete Debarkle: Saga of a Culture War, by Camestros Felapton
To anyone who doesn't already care deeply about the workings of the Hugo award and sff fandom history, this would be an enormously tedious book and also probably a bit baffling. But that's not the audience it's aimed at. It wants to meticulously document the whole situation around the Sad/Rabid Puppies' involvement in the Hugo Awards, including what led up to it and what happened after, to allow the people who already care to fully understand the scope and details. It is the most insider of insider baseball.
And you know what, I am that audience, and I did read all 269,000 or so words of the Complete Debarkle with rapt attention, though also more than one twitter complaint about just how endless the dang thing is.
It's not perfect (as an example, it trends too much in the direction of wanting to present both sides equally when it comes to discussing the Mixon report and the harassment perpetrated by Winterfox/Requires Hate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew), but by gum it achieves what it set out to do and it is a truly impressive achievement.
And despite my previous familiarity, I learned things. There were entire swathes of involved parties I never even heard of previous to this! I do feel like I have a much better grasp on exactly what happened, now, despite having fascinatedly read plenty of blog posts on the topic back in the mid-twenty-teens as it went down.
I also learned some things about older fandom history, and was fascinated to learn more, for example, about Baen Books, which I remember having a vague understanding of as a teen as being the only publisher of REAL science fiction, and now that I have the further context I am SO CURIOUS where I picked up that idea!
(I also learned that sff authors Elizabeth Moon and Elizabeth Bear are not in fact the same person. In my defence, Elizabeth Single-Syllable-Nature-Related-Noun feels like the kind of name that there would unlikely be more than one of within a small category of people! But this does explain why I could never quite remember what that Elizabeth's name was, lol.)
But overall the Complete Debarkle reads like a blog round-up post (well, because it is one, or an extensive series of ones), which is a very specific genre and style of writing. It's collecting information and putting it in front of you to observe the facts of what was said, making use of extensive quotes, rather than synthesising research to present in a more traditional nonfiction book style. There is some commentary, but the point of this kind of writing is less trying to explicitly construct an argument, and more trying to pile together vast quantities of primary source information to allow the readers to draw specific conclusions from the information presented.
I do wish that this book had been a lot shorter, but given that the approach the book was taking was "here's a whole lot of direct quotes from involved participants so you can see exactly what was said," I can see why it couldn't be any shorter within the framework of its intentions.
So the book is very successful, I think, at being exactly the thing it is trying to be, and I can appreciate it and what it's doing. And also dear god I'm grateful I am DONE it now and can STOP READING IT, it was starting to feel like I could literally never reach the end because it would go on forever.
And you know what, I am that audience, and I did read all 269,000 or so words of the Complete Debarkle with rapt attention, though also more than one twitter complaint about just how endless the dang thing is.
It's not perfect (as an example, it trends too much in the direction of wanting to present both sides equally when it comes to discussing the Mixon report and the harassment perpetrated by Winterfox/Requires Hate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew), but by gum it achieves what it set out to do and it is a truly impressive achievement.
And despite my previous familiarity, I learned things. There were entire swathes of involved parties I never even heard of previous to this! I do feel like I have a much better grasp on exactly what happened, now, despite having fascinatedly read plenty of blog posts on the topic back in the mid-twenty-teens as it went down.
I also learned some things about older fandom history, and was fascinated to learn more, for example, about Baen Books, which I remember having a vague understanding of as a teen as being the only publisher of REAL science fiction, and now that I have the further context I am SO CURIOUS where I picked up that idea!
(I also learned that sff authors Elizabeth Moon and Elizabeth Bear are not in fact the same person. In my defence, Elizabeth Single-Syllable-Nature-Related-Noun feels like the kind of name that there would unlikely be more than one of within a small category of people! But this does explain why I could never quite remember what that Elizabeth's name was, lol.)
But overall the Complete Debarkle reads like a blog round-up post (well, because it is one, or an extensive series of ones), which is a very specific genre and style of writing. It's collecting information and putting it in front of you to observe the facts of what was said, making use of extensive quotes, rather than synthesising research to present in a more traditional nonfiction book style. There is some commentary, but the point of this kind of writing is less trying to explicitly construct an argument, and more trying to pile together vast quantities of primary source information to allow the readers to draw specific conclusions from the information presented.
I do wish that this book had been a lot shorter, but given that the approach the book was taking was "here's a whole lot of direct quotes from involved participants so you can see exactly what was said," I can see why it couldn't be any shorter within the framework of its intentions.
So the book is very successful, I think, at being exactly the thing it is trying to be, and I can appreciate it and what it's doing. And also dear god I'm grateful I am DONE it now and can STOP READING IT, it was starting to feel like I could literally never reach the end because it would go on forever.