While I am not a true Science Fiction fan, I do enjoy reading some from time to time as anyone who read this blog may realize. I heard about a protest over the Hugo awards and asked a friend who is a true Sci-Fi fan about it. It turned out she was a Sad Puppy supporter and had been turned off by the preachy political correctness of recent Hugo and Nebula winners.

I only mention this because my friend is (1) female and (2) a programmer—precisely the kind of person the latest issue (Nov. 2015) of Wired magazine was trying to promote. The issue had a number of articles lamenting the preponderance of white and Asian males in tech jobs. There was an article about a group called Black Girls Code and another about a female Mixed Martial Arts champion and a couple about technical people involved in the Black Lives Matter movement. All were attempts to illustrate women and minorities who stood out in fields where they were a significant minority.

It also had an article about the Sad Puppies, the informal group that was protesting some of the recent Hugo and Nebula awards because of their political correctness and lack of engaging story lines. To illustrate a supposedly typical sad puppy, they interviewed a sci-fi fan who lives in the Italian Alps and sounds (if the reporting is accurate) like a true bigot. Come on! This was a hatchet job from the get-go! Wired has done a lot better. Perhaps instead of interviewing normal sad puppies like my friend, Wired wanted to show off some political correctness, and decided that gunning for an award was more important than getting the facts straight.

Some people do like to read stories without being lectured to or preached at. It does not mean that they are bigots.