Dear friends and readers:
I have officially withdrawn my acceptance of the Best Novel nomination for “Lines of Departure” at this year’s Hugo Awards.
It has come to my attention that “Lines of Departure” was one of the nomination suggestions in Vox Day’s “Rabid Puppies” campaign. Therefore—and regardless of who else has recommended the novel for award consideration—the presence of “Lines of Departure” on the shortlist is almost certainly due to my inclusion on the “Rabid Puppies” slate. For that reason, I had no choice but to withdraw my acceptance of the nomination. I cannot in good conscience accept an award nomination that I feel I may not have earned solely with the quality of the nominated work.
I also wish to disassociate myself from the originator of the “Rabid Puppies” campaign. To put it bluntly: if this nomination gives even the appearance that Vox Day or anyone else had a hand in giving it to me because of my perceived political leanings, I don’t want it. I want to be nominated for awards because of the work, not because of the “right” or “wrong” politics.
Thank you to everyone who voted for “Lines of Departure” because you read the novel and genuinely thought it worthy of award recognition. Please be assured that I did not reach this decision lightly, and that I don’t want to nullify or minimize your opinion. But keeping the nomination is not a moral option at this point, and I hope you will understand.
This is my choice alone, and I am making it without pressure from any side in the current Hugo debate. Please respect it as such.
Marko Kloos
April 15, 2015
Sir, you were put in an extremely awkward position through no fault of your own and you responded honorably. I salute you and look forward to reading your books.
The venom spewed above by supporters of the Sad Puppy and Rabid Puppy campaigns who condemn your decision speaks for itself. Evidently they don’t much like being frustrated by folks who can think for themselves and behave more honestly than they have.
Life is too short to waste any more of it responding to their myriad lies and distortions about the nature of the science fiction field and its community, the winners and losers of Hugos over the years, or where our field should be heading. But the less they have to do with it, the better.
I’m sure this feels like a low point in your life and career right now, but in the long run, it’s one you will be able to look back at with pride.
Non timebo catulos!
This is late, but thank you for taking a difficult and principled stance.
I for one will miss voting for LOD. You see Mr. Kloos I stumbled over ToE on Amazon and then waited for LoD. I see from all the comments that since your decision you have made new friends who promise to buy your books all because you took a stand against Vox, not because they had ever heard of you before or if they had they would never have bought your books. Hell, I had never heard of Vox, but I always found it kind of amazing that the same authors kept getting the nominations all the time. Were there not new and exciting authors out there….yea there are, and I found one by the name of Markos Kloos.
I don’t think I have bought a Hugo nominated book since the 70s….oh I have bought and read books that were nominated (prior to the nomination), but after they were nominated…no. I found that most of the nominated works were substandard pieces of floating debris and so sometime around the mid 70s, I think after Dahlgren and Lord of Light I stopped. Its a pity that you turned down the nomination because the right fans did not nominate your book.
I read the comments above and so few people actually understand the nature of the problem. It’s not a left vs right problem; its log rolling – the practice of exchanging favors; hey lets nominate Jane this year, George the next and John for that piece of dreck that he calls a novel the year after.
Have a good day sir…. Oh, one question…If you are nominated again sometime in the future will you decline the nomination if someone like say N.K.Jemison is also on the ballot. I mean you take one principle stand on racism shouldn’t you decry racism wherever it is? Or will you be a hypocrite?
Followed you since Terms of Enlistment first came out on Amazon. As someone who has around 400 books in his kindle library, of which maybe 300-350 are science fiction, I had no clue what any of this drama was about, why? Because I don’t buy and read your books to get involved in some stupid cliquey community.
The point of my post? I’m not a fan of your stories because of any personal views you have, or what your politics are. Frankly, the authors that suddenly start spouting personal politics piss me off- why? Because I buy science FICTION to read about IMAGINARY and SPECULATIVE worlds, not to read some ideological drivel. I’m in the process of self-publishing my own work- it involves fascism, and it doesn’t outright say fascism is wrong- does that mean I support fascism or am a fascist? No, because I don’t and I’m not, I simply enjoy writing and reading science FICTION, because it’s NOT REAL.
Do I and every other reader have personal political and ideological beliefs, with varying degrees of passion/dogmatism in regard to those ideological beliefs? Sure, that doesn’t mean shit like this has to happen, this whole genre is science FICTION, it is SPECULATIVE, it is MAKE BELIEVE.
The people who are really your fans- people that buy into the stories you tell- we don’t care. All this drama with SP/RP and the Hugo awards? I don’t care, I’ve never cared, I’m not going to care. You want to withdraw? Cool, I didn’t even know you were nominated because I only care about the stories you tell, not about some stupid cliquey community having some sort of civil war that reminds me of a gaming community gone wrong.
So long as you continue to tell stories I enjoy, I will continue to give you my money and support. I do ask, as a side note though, that you cut this political drama out of your blog- it kills the vibe and I prefer the old posts about YOU, not about some dramatic communities’ clique civil war.
tl;dr, Your real fans won’t give a shit about this, they may not give you support again with regards to this Hugo stuff, but they will continue to buy and read your work for as long as they enjoy doing so.
Keep up the good work, Mr Kloos.
A samurai. My hat is off.
Keep on writing, Marko. Bought the first book in support of your move. Keep on writing.
Marko, you keep on writing, I’ll keep on reading. Good for you for sticking to your code, I know it’s not easy, especially when it comes to a career enhancing award.
Marko, I’d like to suggest that you turn off the comments of this particular topic now. Just about everyone has surely had their chance to weigh in, and just about every possible point of view has now surely been expressed. The amazingly irritable and abusive folks who apparently think that you’re Satan Incarnate for your decision to remove your book from the Hugo ballot have now had so much to say that I fear for their blood pressures, not to mention the fact that I’m pretty thoroughly sick of wading through their frothings, myself. Besides; there must be *some* other topic out there in the world for them to shriek about, and we really should stop distracting them from their important work and let them get back to all those “whack-a-mole” concerns.
Mr. Kloos, up until this point I have been a great fan, however, I nominated Lines of Departure because I thought is was worthy of an award, not because of whose list it was on. Granted it was the SP list that got me involved in the Hugo’s again, and hey, I happen to have similar reading tastes.
Declining that nomination is a slap in the face to the fans who wanted to support you. If you have a personal problem with Vox Day, leave your fans out of it. In the end I think you will find your bowing down to an overly vocal minority will hurt you more than bowing out has helped you.
As for me I will not make that mistake again.
Fully agreed.
Yikes. Screw politics. Marko shouldn’t have to experience this kinda stuff. Only commenting to add my .02c; that being that my man writes good books.
Props, seriously. If you’re ever in the ATL I’ll buy you a beer. Just went and pre-ordered Angles in the olden days paper format. Hope that puts a few pennies in your pocket.
First I would like to remind some of the posters that words mean what they mean and the word terrorist means that they leave REAL bodies of REAL people scattered around in bloody shreds and the use of that word cheapens that reality.
Second I am not going to buy works by this author because of his actions nor am I NOT going to buy his work because of his action.
Whether or not I ever do buy his works depends on part on the reccomendation of Larry Correia who I REALLY like I have attended TWO Cons outside of my home city which has hosted ICON for the last 39 years. One was the hundred year birthday of Heinlein a few years back and the other was Ozfest in Omaha to meet Correia.
So yeah I give Correia a lot of credit when he says something might be worth reading
As to the Hugo deal? I came to all this late in the last few days.
Mr Kloos has the right to make his own decisions I accept that but back in 1968 one of the networks had Gore Vidal and William F Buckley as commentators during the election and Vidal said to Buckley you may not agree with me but you have to respect my decision to say what I think.
Buckley replied that he did not feel compelled to respect stupid,
Sorry but while I stipulate Mr Kloos has the right to make his own decsions I don’t feel compelled to respect someone allowing any group to drive their life.
I am that way I don’t lie down
And because of that fact and the campaign signs I have put in my front yard I long since lost count of the signs I had to rerpair and put back up but I can count the number of times I have had to replace windows in my car, have my front porch light put back up on the wall once and have the downspout that was ripped off the side of my house repaird once
I do beleive I have eaned my rifght to comment on political harrassment?
But eveyone might not be as stupid and sturbborn as I am
I don’t lie down
Not even when someone tried to steal my identity and request the Host of my Website cancel my account
Or reported to Facebook there was suspicious activity on my account which prompted them to have me swear that the finanacial means used by me to buy ads were my own and I had to submit a jpg of a Color Government issued Photo ID to verify that I am indeed a US citizen
Or orgainzied a campaign of complaints that had my advertizing rights suspended which has just been reinstated after I sent FB some interestng detalls about my detractors.
Yeah I know what harassment feels like,
I could mention that possibly as a result of the excess stress I ended up having quintuple bypass open heart surgery
But like I said I am stupid and stubborn and I don’t lie down
So someone tell me
If I should decide to jump into this Hugo deal why should I ever nominate Mr Kloos
I know Larry Correia thinks he is a geat writer and quite a few here have said the same but wouldn’t I risk WASTING a nomination if he should wind up on a List by this VOX character or someone like him and withdraw Again?
….All of which depends on the premise that science fiction should be the battlefield of a culture war Marko should be all in trying to win, as well as an assumption that he declined the nomination because one side was pressuring him to do so for political reasons and not because he disagreed with that premise.
It seems to me that when he wound up unwittingly part of a slate distributed by someone who not only has a political agenda, but one that has a lot of features Marko finds repellent, he refused to allow THAT group to drive his life and stepped out rather than live with the doubt that he won on merit rather than because he was on a slate.
But, y’know. The group that’s currently calling him a spineless coward lackey of a political side who should never be nominated again and wouldn’t have been without that slate isn’t applying pressure or slander or guilt by association. They’re just not lying down.
It’s different, because they are Warriors for Justice in Society, and not SJW’s.
Which means they can defend Sad Puppies by using all the online tactics that Sad Puppies has stated to be against.
LabRat,
“The group that’s currently calling him a spineless coward lackey of a political side who should never be nominated again and wouldn’t have been without that slate isn’t applying pressure or slander or guilt by association. They’re just not lying down.”
Discovering just how scarce a commodity self-awareness actually is has been an unexpected bonus of this, no?
You and I both have “bonus” in our vocabulary, but I’m not sure we think it means the same thing.
Well, congratulations! Thanks for shortening my pile of books to read. Your spinal flexibility reminds me of the way Commie bloc writers went into internal emigration or sucked up to their respective regimes after being proprly chastised and browbeaten by Zhdanovshchina supporters. Mere fact that people who would probably despise your own political leanings – not to mention repulsive, vote buying creatures like Kowal – applaud your decision should tell you that you’ve screwed up. Enjoy your career – unlike your reputation, for now it remains something to be enjoyed.
I bought both of the Frontlines books to read them before my first ever Hugo vote.I am sad that you miss out on a chance to get the Hugo this year, but I applaud your integrity.
I had read your book, “Terms of Enlistment” long before all of this nonsense started and greatly enjoyed it. People don’t seem to notice how hard it is to write a book that’s so easy to read, they seem to think it is simplistic.
It’s sad to see you withdraw from the Hugo’s, but I respect your decision. Here’s to next year and another nomination.
You keep writing great books – I’ll keep buying them and reading them – I feel pretty certain there are a lot of people that feel the same way, which I am grateful for as it means hopefully more books of yours to read in the future. To borrow from Twain “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Maybe substitute “baffle” for “astonish” in this case. Screw the noise – do what you do.
My sincere condolences on getting caught in the crosstown. I wish you luck next year.
Well, I’m still going to buy Angles of Attack, and read it…so there! Nyah!
(You think Three Body Problem is really a worthy replacement? Seriously? Guess I should give it a read, then.)
I respect your decision, but please do not let this crap dissuade you from fighting the good fight. Never give up. This cloud was none of your doing, but you have to suffer for it, and for that, I am very sorry. I was one of those who would judge your work on its merits.
That being said, I not only respect you and your decision, but this whole event has ironically made me into a fan. If there is any justice, you will still be considered as a proud member of the Hugo Loser’s Club. It is filled with a long line of wonderful people, and the pall was none of your creation. You are a good person. I will raise a drink to you. I will be following your career closely and enjoy your novels.
Never give up hope!
As a lfe long SF and Fantasy fan I have to applaud what must have been a very fraught decision. I have yet to read your work but I feel I have to do so now because you are cerintly someone with integrity. The use of the Hugo’s this year have pretty well destroyed the future reputation of the honored rocket statue… I wish you none but the best in your writing future