When Puppies start to hate: the revanchist nostalgia of the Hugo Awards’ PuppyGate controversy

ABSTRACT

In 2015, two groups of right-wing authors and fans – the Sad and Rabid Puppies – flooded the Hugo Awards with literature they deemed “popular” and anti-“message fiction.” These reactionaries mobilized the affects of melancholy, anger, and hatred against the increasing diversification of speculative fiction. Through analyzing the affective economy of “PuppyGate,” this article demonstrates the key role of nostalgia in the affective economies of reactionary movements, paying particular attention to the tension between restorative nostalgia, with its aim to return to an imagined past, and revanchist nostalgia, which strives to destroy the present and punish those who made that destruction necessary.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• Hugo Awards
• revanchist nostalgia
• reactionaries
• speculative fiction

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Calum Matheson, Caitlin Bruce, Lester Olson, Dan Wang, Ron Von Burg, and Brent Malin for their feedback on various drafts of this article. I would also like to thank David E.K. Smith, Kevin Pabst, Reed Van Schenck, Larissa A. Irizarry, as well as the editor, editorial assistant, and reviewers for their thoughtful, generative suggestions throughout the writing and editing process. Special thanks are owed to Thomas J. Griffin, who fanned my interest in SF and introduced me to PuppyGate, and to Brenna Dosser for her unwavering support throughout the many cycles of edits.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The genre of speculative fiction encompasses both science fiction and fantasy, but the authors involved in PuppyGate tend to focus more on science fiction. One potential explanation might be that many of the works the PuppyGate authors reference were from the 1950s and 1960s, before fantasy was revived as a genre but a classical period for conservative science fiction.

2 Abigail Nussbaum, “The 2015 Hugo Awards: Why I Am Voting No Award in the Best Fan Writer Category,” Asking the Wrong Questions, April 10, 2015, http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-2015-hugo-awards-why-i-am-voting-no.html.

3 “Hugo Award Nominations Spark Criticism over Diversity in Sci-Fi,” The Telegraph, April 7, 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11517920/Hugo-Award-nominations-spark-criticism-over-diversity-in-sci-fi.html.

4 Jonathan Flatley, Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 12. Flatley describes emotions through the inside-out model, while scholars such as Debra Hawhee and Ann Cvetovich describe how emotions move across bodies and publics in their works.

5 Flatley, Affective Mapping, 12.

6 Caitlin Bruce, “The Balaclava as Affect Generator: Free Pussy Riot Protests and Transnational Iconicity,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2015): 48 https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2014.989246.

7 Jenny Edbauer Rice, “The New ‘New’: Making a Case for Critical Affect Studies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 2 (2008): 206, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630801975434.

8 Sara Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” Social Text 22, no. 2 (2004): 119, https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-22-2_79-117.

9 Audre Lorde, “Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde (Freedom, CA: Crossing, 1984), 129 (my italics).

10 Lorde, “Uses of Anger,” 129.

11 Lester C. Olson, “Anger Among Allies: Audre Lorde’s 1981 Keynote Admonishing the National Women’s Studies Association,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 3 (2011): 283–308, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2011.585169.

12 Rebecca Traister, Good and Mad (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 19.

13 Sara Ahmed, “Embodying Diversity: Problems and Paradoxes for Black Feminists,” Race Ethnicity and Education 12, no. 1 (2009): 41–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320802650931; Rachel Alicia Griffin, “I AM an Angry Black Woman: Black Feminist Autoethnography, Voice, and Resistance,” Women’s Studies in Communication 35, no. 2 (2012): 138–57, https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2012.724524.

14 R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

15 Philippe-Joseph Salazar, “Rhetoric on the Bleachers, or, The Rhetorician as Melancholiac,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 41, no. 4 (2008): 358, https://doi.org/10.1353/par.0.0021. For more on melancholy in rhetoric, see Barbara Biesecker, “No Time for Mourning: The Rhetorical Production of the Melancholic Citizen-Subject in the War on Terror,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 40, no. 1 (2007): 147–69, https://doi.org/10.1353/par.2007.0009.

16 Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in The Complete Psychological Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. 14, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1957), 243.

17 Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” 257.

18 David L. Eng and Shinhee Han, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 25.

19 Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 159.

20 Casey Ryan Kelly, “The Wounded Man: Foxcatcher and the Incoherence of White Masculine Victimhood,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 2 (2018): 165, https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2018.1456669.

21 Kristin M.S. Bezio, “Ctrl-Alt-Del: GamerGate as a Precursor to the Rise of the Alt-Right,” Leadership 14, no. 5 (2018): 556–66, https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715018793744.

22 Shira Chess and Adrienne Shaw, “A Conspiracy of Fishes, Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 59, no. 1 (2015): 208–20, https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2014.999917.

23 Other scholars using affect theory in similar ways include Alexandra Deem, “The Digital Traces of #whitegenocide and Alt-Right Affective Economies of Transgression,” International Journal of Communication 13 (2019): 3183–202, https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/9631; Marina Levina and Kumarini Silva, “Cruel Intentions: Affect Theory in the Age of Trump,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 1 (2018): 70–72, https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2018.1435080. Additionally, while affect studies has the tendency to ignore social difference and largely center whiteness, recent scholarship has been critical of this approach. Examples include Mel Y. Chen, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Claudia Garcia-Rojas, “(Un)Disciplined Futures: Women of Color Feminism as a Disruptive to White Affect Studies,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 21, no. 3 (2017): 254–71, https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2016.1159072.

24 Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 213.

25 Gould, Moving Politics; Erin J. Rand, “Gay Pride and Its Queer Discontents: ACT UP and the Political Deployment of Affect,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no. 1 (2012): 75–80, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2011.638665; Isaac West, “Reviving Rage,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no. 1 (2012): 97–102, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2011.638666

26 Kenneth S. Zagacki and Patrick A. Boleyn-Fitzgerald, “Rhetoric and Anger,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 39, no. 4 (2006): 295, https://doi.org/10.1353/par.2007.0006.

27 Celeste Michelle Condit, Angry Public Rhetorics: Global Relations and Emotion in the Wake of 9/11 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018).

28 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), xiii.

29 Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 41.

30 Neil Smith, “After Tompkins Square Park: Degentrification and the Revanchist City” in Re-presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the 21st Century Metropolis, ed. Anthony D. King (London: Macmillan, 1996), 94.

31 Bharath Ganesh, “Weaponizing White Thymos: Flows of Rage in the Online Audiences of the Alt-Right,” Cultural Studies (2020): 893–4, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2020.1714687. Emphasis is in the original.

32 Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Malden, MA: Polity, 2015).

33 Eric King Watts, “‘Zombies are Real’: Fantasies, Conspiracies, and the Post-Truth Wars,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 51, no. 4 (2018): 441–70, https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.51.4.0441.

34 Eric King Watts, “Postracial Fantasies, Blackness, and Zombies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 14, no. 3 (2017): 317–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2017.1338742.

35 Alexei Panshin, Heinlein in Dimension: A Critical Analysis (Chicago: Advent Publishing, 1968); Leighton Brett Cooke, “The Human Alien: In-Groups and Outbreeding in Enemy Mine,” in Aliens: The Anthropology of Science Fiction, eds. Eric S. Rabkin and George E. Slusser (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1987), 132–7.

36 James Davis Nicoll, “Gender and the Hugo Awards, by the Numbers,” Tor, September 10, 2019, https://www.tor.com/2019/09/10/gender-and-the-hugo-awards-by-the-numbers/.

37 Isiah Lavender III, Race in American Science Fiction (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), 8.

38 Chaya Porter, “‘Engaging’ in Gender, Race, Sexuality and (Dis)Ability in Science Fiction Television through Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager” (PhD diss., University of Ottawa, 2013), x, https://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/24209.

39 Tom Shippey, Hard Reading: Learning From Science Fiction (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 260.

40 Ria Cheyne, Disability, Literature, Genre: Representation and Affect in Contemporary Fiction (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019).

41 Carl Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2000); Jutta Weldes, ed., To Seek Out New Worlds: Science Fiction and World Politics (New York: Springer, 2003).

42 Larry Correia, “How to Get Correia Nominated for a Hugo,” Monster Hunter Nation, January 8, 2013, http://monsterhunternation.com/2013/01/08/how-to-get-correia-nominated-for-a-hugo/.

43 Correia offers no real definition of what constitutes “message fiction” or the “literati.” Based on his posts and the posts of his supporters, “message-fic” varies between fiction that has a message (which would be essentially all fiction) and fiction that one cannot enjoy unless they agree with its message, while the literati is generally portrayed as a snobbish, left-leaning group of authors and fans who prefer message-fic over “traditional,” “fun” fiction.

44 Correia, “How to Get Correia Nominated for a Hugo.”

45 Even outside of SF, reactionaries have an aversion to messages. The online message board 4chan – which along with 8chan, Parler, and Gabi.ai are hot spots for far-right extremism – will ban users if they attempt to promote a message or a cause. Thomas Colley and Martin Moore, “The Challenges of Studying 4chan and the Alt-Right: ‘Come on in the Water’s Fine,’” New Media and Society 24, no. 1 (2022): 5–30, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820948803.

46 Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 43.

47 Lavender, Race in American Science Fiction, 10–11.

48 Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner, The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online (Malden, MA: Polity, 2017), 112–6.

49 Amy Wallace, “Who Won Science Fiction's Hugo Awards, and Why It Matters,” Wired, August 23, 2015, https://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/.

50 Deem, “The Digital Traces of #whitegenocide,” 3190.

51 Robert J. Topinka, “Politically Incorrect Participatory Media: Racist Nationalism on r/ImGoingToHellForThis,” New Media & Society 20 (2018): 2055, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817712516.

52 Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” 247.

53 Larry Correia, “Back from Texas, and Now It Is Sad Puppies Season 2!,” Monster Hunter Nation, January 7, 2014, https://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/back-from-texas-and-now-it-is-sad-puppies-season-2/.

54 Larry Correia, “Sad Puppies 2: The Debatening!,” Monster Hunter Nation, February 20, 2014, https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/02/20/sad-puppies-2-the-debatening/.

55 Larry Correia, “An Explanation About the Hugo Awards Controversy,” Monster Hunter Nation, April 24, 2014, http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/.

56 Correia, “An Explanation About the Hugo Awards Controversy.”

57 Correia, “An Explanation About the Hugo Awards Controversy.”

58 Brad Torgersen, “How You Can Aid the Valiant Sad Puppies 3 Campaign!,” Blue Collar Speculative Fiction, January 21, 2015, https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/how-you-can-aid-the-valiant-sad-puppies-3-campaign/.

59 Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992).

60 Adam Roberts, The History of Science Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 287–332.

61 Paula Ioanide, The Emotional Politics of Racism: How Feelings Trump Facts in an Era of Color Blindness (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015).

62 Elizabeth Sandifer, Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right (Scotts Valley, CA: Eruditorum Press, 2017), 356.

63 Another interpretation could be, rather than fear, this is anxiety. Calum Matheson writes, “Anxiety results when the object of the Other’s desire draws too close, eliminating the distance that permits subjects to enjoy their fantasies.” SF is about imagining new worlds that might be. Matheson would say what makes it pleasurable is that dynamic between “here” and “gone,” where we can play with the ideas but not live in them. When a new world is introduced – one ushered in by increasing diversity in SF – it is jarring to the more “traditional,” white, male authors. They do not know what the Other wants of them, so they feel excluded or rejected by that order. “Filthy Lucre: Gold, Language, and Exchange Anxiety,” Review of Communication 18, no. 4 (2018): 250, https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2018.1508738.

64 Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” 125.

65 Brad Torgersen, “The Fear Factor in SF/F Publishing and Fandom,” Blue Collar Speculative Fiction, April 1, 2015, https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/the-fear-factor-in-sff-publishing-and-fandom/.

66 Torgersen, “The Fear Factor in SF/F Publishing and Fandom.”

67 Torgersen, “The Fear Factor in SF/F Publishing and Fandom.”

68 Tammy Clewell, “Mourning Beyond Melancholia: Freud’s Psychoanalysis of Loss,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 52, no.1 (2004): 47, https://doi.org/10.1177/00030651040520010601.

69 This has a clear connection with anxiety in the form of the Other. The Sad Puppies want the validation from WSFS, to be the object of the Other’s affection, and they panic when they apparently are not.

70 Vox Day, “Posterity: TK vs VD,” Castalia House, February 24, 2013, http://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/06/posterity-tk-vs-vd.html.

71 Rajan Khanna, “Controversies Inside the World of Science Fiction and Fantasy,” LitReactor, November 26, 2013, https://litreactor.com/columns/controversies-inside-the-worl-of-science-fiction-and-fantasy; Vox Day, “A Black Female Fantasist Calls for Reconciliation,” Castalia House, June 13, 2013, http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-black-female-fantasist.html.

72 Vox Day, “Rabid Puppies 2015,” Castalia House, February 2, 2015, http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/02/rabid-puppies-2015.html.

73 Day argues it is offensive to call him a white supremacist, as he identifies as Native American. This reasoning, however, can be seen as further trolling. In his definition of the alt-right, Day proposes several tenets, the 14th being “the Alt Right believes we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children.” This is a clear evocation of the “Fourteen Words” slogan of white nationalists (also called “14/88”). Its placement as the 14th tenet makes the connection clearer. For more, see David Auerbach, “The Sci-Fi Roots of the Far Right—From ‘Lucifer’s Hammer’ to Newt’s Moon Base to Donald’s Wall,” The Daily Beast, September 17, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/from-lucifers-hammer-to-newts-moon-base-to-donalds-wallthe-sci-fi-roots-of-the-far-right.

74 Ahmed, Cultural Politics of Emotion, 43.

75 Wallace, “Who Won Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards, and Why It Matters.”

76 Lorde, “Uses of Anger,” 129.

77 Day, “Rabid Puppies 2015.”

78 Casey Ryan Kelly, Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2020), 83–104.

79 Jodi Dean, “Affective Networks,” MediaTropes 2, no. 2 (2010): 21, https://mediatropes.com/index.php/Mediatropes/article/view/11932.

80 Ganesh, “Weaponizing White Thymos,” 901.

81 Ganesh, “Weaponizing White Thymos,” 916.

82 Brad Torgersen, “Sad Puppies: We Are Not Rabid Puppies,” Blue Collar Speculative Fiction, April 16, 2015, https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/we-are-not-rabid/. Emphasis is in the original.

83 Torgersen, “We Are Not Rabid Puppies.”

84 Jason Kehe, “The Hidden, Wildly NSFW Scandal of the Hugo Nominations,” Wired, April 6, 2017, https://www.wired.com/2017/04/hugo-nominations-who-is-stix-hiscock/.

85 The expression “for the lulz” is associated with people speaking or acting, especially online, in a particular way to provoke a response they find humorous, even if they purportedly don’t believe in what they are doing/saying.

86 Heather Suzanne Woods and Leslie A. Hahner, Make America Meme Again: The Rhetoric of the Alt-Right (New York: Peter Lang, 2019), 103–36

87 Sandifer, Neoreaction a Basilisk, 392.