[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Thanks! So the controversy had nothing to do with content of the story itself, then?

Well, besides the fact that it's really kind of surprisingly mediocre for a major award-winner, which was kind of what the kerfuffle was partly about. (But then, it managed to be just slightly less mediocre than the stories that I voted in 5th+ place behind it in the Hugos; methinks 2010 was not that great a year for shorter-form fiction if those really were the best they could scrape up.)

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I made the mistake of assuming the controversy had to do something with "Mormon missionary space whale rape."

I think that sort of thing's just par for the course these days. We're just lucky it's not a "post-apocalyptic steampunk telepathic AI Mormon missionary emotionally-bonded to a cyborg zombie space whale rape" story. Though IMHO, that would have made it a lot more interesting, even if the annoyingly smug

Spoiler:

"I am so totally not pushing my proselytizing superior human ways on these ignorant ancient advanced aliens with their longstanding ancient alien customs, but it's so amazingly easy to trick them by appealing to their childlike egomania into going along with what I say that they'll naturally bow to the superior superiority of proselytizing superior human ways over their longstanding ancient alien customs"

aspect which made me when I originally read it stayed in place.