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The puppies seemed to be focused on some stupid false equivalences, and what they say rarely seems to correspond to what they do.
The false equivalences:
Good old-fashioned adventure space fiction = popular = right wing = Baen (or at least not Tor)
Hectoring message fiction = unpopular = left wing = Tor
Now, I love a good story, and I think about 99% of the Hugo constituency do too. I am in no way right wing, I like some Baen books. Oddly, I have this capacity to enjoy tropey military SF and thoughtful literary SF. It seems insane, I know, but I don't always want the same things out of every book I read.
In addition, I'm not American, so the politics and publisher bun-fights aren't really much to do with me. I don't really even know how the popularity converts across the Atlantic.
So, popular best-selling space adventures? Like John Scalzi's Redshirts, you mean? No? The author is too left-wing? (I didn't especially rate Redshirts, myself, but I don't think you can sensibly deny that it was popular and mainstream.)
How about like Ancillary Justice, a great galactic empire story with some nice ideas? No? You can't get over the pronoun thing and somehow think this is heavy-handed message fiction (rather than being, in my opinion, the most Hugo-y Hugo winner in about 20 years)?
Good old-fashioned stuff like Heinlein? You have read Heinlein? Only I don't remember him shying away from the odd message.
It's interesting to me that among the categories completely dominated by the puppy slates, were the short fiction and editorial categories. I've mentioned before that I nominated last year, but I didn't nominate in any of those categories. I don't really read any new short fiction, except maybe in the odd anthology, and I don't really get the point of the editorial awards. How do I know what an editor does? How do I even know who edited a given book? I'd be happy to see those categories dropped. Maybe have best Anthology instead of Editor, Short Form (we already have a best magazine, for some weird definition of magazine), and best Publisher/Imprint instead of Long Form (maybe just assume it'll be Tor every year and don't bother)?
The short fiction categories have low nomination numbers and have thrown up some pretty disappointing shortlists lately. I know that Eric Flint, for one, has argued that short fiction isn't very relevant any more, and we should be going the other way and having Best Series, but I think that does miss a crucial point: It's very easy to do the due diligence on the short fiction awards, and it'd be nearly impossible with a series award. In the few years I've taken part in the voting, I've never failed to read all of the short fiction (except that one Mira Grant novella I just didn't want to read), whereas I have failed to read all the novels on a couple of occasions.
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