Whoo, it’s been festive around here.
For those of you who have been living in Outer Graustarkia, our own Cedar Sanderson was nominated for a Dragon Award for her cover of Goblin Market (WARNING: You Are Not Allowed To View This Book, Per Dragon*Con)
You can imagine the hullabaloo that went on at the Blanket Fort until …
… Suddenly her name wasn’t on the list of nominees.
Well, somewhat confused we sent Dragon*Con emails asking “Hey, what happened?” to be met with complete silence. And not just us.
As an aside, I’m here to tell you, the number of fans lighting up my various comms in outrage was awe-inspiring. Good Lord, folks, we are humbled by your support.
Anyhoo, after indignant fans lit up social media Dragon*Con finally got around to issuing an explanation.
Ladies, gentlemen, and fans, Dragon*Con has the absolute right to run their awards in the way they see fit.
And I have the absolute right to feel certain ways about how they run said award.
I have issues with how they posted her name, then yanked it down without any explanation. This smacks of “Maybe no-one will notice” to me.
I have issues with the fact that when they yanked her name down, they didn’t post the deserving artist who should have been next. Dragon Awards have six names for nomination. This year the Best Cover category only has five names. If Cedar didn’t have a chance, there’s another artist out there — whose name should have replaced hers — who also didn’t get a chance. And that isn’t right.
I have issues with the official explanation of how things went down. If I read it correctly, they were: “… alerted to the fact that Cedar Sanderson’s entry in the Best Illustrative Cover category had been created in part using Artificial Intelligence tools. After this “alert” they never contacted Cedar, nor her press, nor me — her publisher — to make enquiries, ask questions, or verify anything.
Granted, we have never hidden the fact that we do, in fact, gleefully use AI tools for our covers and interior artwork — but if someone has to “alert” you to this fact, you obviously don’t already know this, and you should probably do some checking.
But, all in all, this means nothing. Ultimately Dragon*Con has the absolute right to run their award in the manner which they see fit.
Going forward from this, Cedar has asked that her fans not nominate her for a Dragon Award in the future. I realize that some of you are bound and determined to nominate her again to Make A Point, but just don’t. It’ll distress her, and not make any kind of a difference.
As the CEO and Publisher of Raconteur Press, I am also going to request that books from the press not be nominated at the Dragons. We are starting out 2025 publishing some really good novels — seriously, guys, these are some mind-blowing stories we’ve got coming out — but they are all going to have Cedar covers. So, let’s just not bother the Dragon Awards with those, ok?
Some of y’all have asked what you can do.
Well, the best award that authors and publishers can get is green, comes in paper form, and we call it the Benjy Award*.
Yes! If you want to help, buy our books. You can start with this one:
The Book With the AI Cover So Controversial DragonCon Had To Disappear It Into The Night And Fog
And, after experiencing the thrill of Literary Breaking Bad, if you wish to Peer Into The Void Your Betters Warned You About, you can Experience Artwork Only WrongFans Are Capable Of Appreciating!
LawDog
*Money. Buy our books. We’re a small — and apparently dangerously subversive — press, and we need to eat.
Yeah, Dragon seems to have gone the way of the Hugos. WHO made the call to Dragon about her cover? Why didn’t DragonCon follow their own rules? Did they check any of the other covers for AI influence? Why wasn’t another person substituted. Too many questions and this may cost DragonCon much in the future.
Highly doubt it had anything to do with AI, and everything to do with continuing attacks against anyone perceived as not being part of the “in crowd.”
Silly wrongfans. Your wrongfun will not be tolerated.
Damned with faint praise, they are.
This stinks of a TradPress or a Thief (aka Vanity) house trying to hide stellar work released by a Publisher who actually has transparent contracts, transparent sales accounting, and transparent (and short) rights reversion policies.
Make ’em squirm, Lawdog.
Sigh.
Now we have to have ‘that’ conversation about what is ‘Art.’ Is it dribbles of paint on a canvas? A religious icon in a jar of urine? Where’s the dividing line?
What if the artist is disabled and can only use AI? Is that art? Is being against that art being ‘anti-disabled?’
I’ve seen lots of AI generated art. It takes artistic taste to make AI art good.
And if it ain’t in the rules, it ain’t against the rules.
Why are awards committees so full of feckless idiots?
My level of painting is “Paint by Numbers” and stick figures. That said I have taken some photographs good enough to win ribbons at the state fair. A coworker saw one of my photographs and wanted to do a charcoal drawing of it. I lent him the photo and did a nice job on the drawing.
My questions are: Is my friend’s drawing “art” because it was based on a photo? Is my photograph “art” even though no pen or brush ever touched paper? If we define art by the tools used to create it, where do we draw the line? Are acrylics verboten because Michelangelo didn’t have access to them?
I have no answers to the above, but the hypocrisy shown by the awards committee is incredible.
I’ve written to Dragon and asked my name be removed from their voter roll. I didn’t say why as I expect it would fall on deaf ears.
Time to move on and go back to earning those Benjamins! Nothing we do is going to change anything except our BP.
I think the reason that they didn’t put the ‘next’ person in line for the ballot and had to leave it at 5 was because the ‘next’ person in line was probably ALSO a cover done by Cedar.
I heartily second the sentiment for your art collection of presidential portraits. By Monet.