The Complete Debarkle: Saga of a Culture War, by Camestros Felapton

[sophia_sol]

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.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

(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!

There is also Elizabeth Hand, though I don't know that one can claim "hand" to be nature related. (I haven't read any of Hand's work, unlike Moon's and Bear's, though.)

I am definitely interested in this particular flavor of inside baseball, but it also sounds like reading this book would not actually be appreciably more expeditious than, like, browsing a couple of years of File770 archives, so I will probably pass on it.

[sophia_sol]

Huh, I've never heard of Elizabeth Hand! I do think her last name though, despite being arguably naturey also, doesn't feel like the same ~vibe~ of name, if you get me :P

I do think that this book manages to give a lot more direct quotes from the puppies and their allies than one would get from browsing File770, to get a better sense of exactly what they were thinking with all this (and....how all over the place their thinking was), and it also tries to ground and contextualize it in a lot of more far-reaching activity, but yeah, cannot recommend it as an EFFICIENT way of learning about what happened!

[hamsterwoman]

Yeah, I agree it's a different vibe to the names -- but I kind of learned to group the sci-fi writers called Elizabeth by "four letter common noun" in my head, without thinking about the semantic properties of the noun, if that makes sense, so I do think of them collectively, as Moon-Bear-Hand, in the order that I encountered them (Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion as a teenager, EBear via blogging at matociquala and then reading a couple of her books, and actually now that I think about it, I must have read some of Hand's works in anthologies, because I do remember having a thought at some point that now I've sampled all three.

IIRC, File770 was pretty good at linking to at least some of the Puppies stuff, because I was using it as my news aggregator on the topic and I did end up reading at least the Sad Puppies' positions and grievances, and I think also remember clicking on some of the Rabid Puppies' screeds before backing away slowly.

But I do really like the point below that having it all collected in a book means it can't just vanish off the net the way so many things are wont to do.

and it also tries to ground and contextualize it in a lot of more far-reaching activity

And this is actually really cool! and not something you'd get from contemporary blogs for sure...

[chestnut_pod]

Truly you are doing g-d's work by reading and digesting this in lieu of me reading and digesting this. I am almost curious about what a 269,000 word "fandom drama roundup blog post" book would feel like. Almost.

[sophia_sol]

glad my efforts could be useful!! :D

[silverflight8]

I'm dying at the title "debarkle"

I'm not sure I have the patience to read it - I only skimmed it when the original blowup was happening and haven't ever had a WorldCon membership/gone, so tangential simply for being a SFF fan. But I am always in favour of people putting together thorough primary sources especially for something that happens online, since they disappear quickly, both on purpose and as various sites decide to purge old content, fold, etc.

[sophia_sol]

yeah I'm truly impressed with the work the author put into collecting all these primary sources. From author Facebook page comment sections, from "journalism" done by the alt-right crowd, from 4chan/8chan etc, from blogs all over the Internet, from posts that were deleted or edited post-facto....he really went digging and he found SO much more than I know I would have been able to if I'd tried!

[pauraque]

Elizabeth Moon and Elizabeth Bear are not in fact the same person.

TIL!

[sophia_sol]

ahahaha glad I wasn't alone in this problem!!!!!

[oracne]

That sounds like it will be a very useful historical document for future readers, too.

[sophia_sol]

yeah absolutely!