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I don't know what this is supposed to mean. The nominees prior reflected a left-skewed and "literary" preference. Enter Correia and Torgersen complaining that not enough stuff they like is getting nominated. I missed the part where they claimed the process was rigged, which just makes them look worse because what transpired was the opposite of what you'd expect from a rigged process. Putting together an organized slate successfully got a bunch of their preferred candidates on the ballot, whereas if there were people putting their thumb on the scale behind the scenes that would have failed. What they did do was piss off a lot of people, resulting in people openly organizing against them. Instead of it being vaguely left-inflected, ideological conflict was made explicit. After a couple of years the effort petered out, but left behind their ideologically motivated adversaries. It's not "they deserved it" it's "they catalyzed the process".
Can you give examples? Looking at Hugo Best Novel winners from the pre-puppy era, we (going backwards) have: Among Others (female straight white author, primary world fantasy), Blackout (straight white female author, time travel), Windup Girl/City and the City joint winners (both straight white male authors, cyberpunk and social science fiction, respectively), The Graveyard Book (straight white male author, fantasy), The Yiddish Policeman's Union (bi? white male author, alt-history), Rainbow's End (straight white male author, not-really-cyberpunk-but-that's-probably-the-closest-relative), Spin (straight white male author, classic sci fi), Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (straight white female author, historical fantasy). That takes us back to 2005. You can look back further, but I don't think it is going to reveal anything.
As far as I can tell, the "woke" trend in the Hugo Awards started after and in reaction to the Puppies. Hence my remarks above. The only that seems to even come close to the critique is Among Others.
And the sneering that the Puppies were all racist sexist bigots? That didn't happen either and didn't matter?
Ah, right: science fiction is now about social justice, not, you know, science fiction.
My sympathies with the Sad Puppies were not "I think trashy pulp skiffy should win" (though again, trashy pulp skiffy can be just what the doctor ordered at times), it was "Well if I'm a racist sexist bigot for liking this kind of story and not that kind of story where a trans (possibly) non-white (possibly) lesbian (possibly) paleontologist gets beaten up by gin-swilling rednecks for being (I quote) "a fag, a towel-head, a shemale, a sissy, a spic, every epithet they could think of, regardless of whether it had anything to do with you or not" because I don't think the latter is quite SF, then I'm a racist etc. etc. etc. because I would prefer to read SF/Fantasy and not poor quality literary magazine rejects".
Oh, it definitely did. Because a quite a lot of the Puppies were racist, sexist bigots, most prominently Vox Day and his followers. Especially considering that Vox Day was more successful than Correia or Torgersen. If the shoe fits, wear it.
It wasn't the about the not-liking, it was about the vicious backlash to, essentially, two short story nominations.
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