There’s an awful lot bad going on in the world at the moment, and much of it we can’t do anything about. However, those of you who have a membership in this year’s Worldcon can do one positive thing: you can give everyone’s least favorite disease another kick in the teeth. Yep, it is Puppy Clobbering time again.

Many of you will have already downloaded the Voter Packet, though I don’t blame you if you haven’t read it all. If you need a quick guide to which items on it got there because of the Puppies, Mike Glyer has a comprehensive guide.

Having said that, not everything on the Puppy slates is awful. Last year VD and his drones claimed “victory” because one of their picks took out the Dramatic Presentation: Long Form category. That was for a film about a multi-racial crew of misfits who saved the galaxy from a racist, religious fundamentalist bigot on behalf of a government with a female head of state. It says a lot about the fragility of VD’s ego that he has to claim such things as victories.

Of course you should come up with your own philosophy as to how to vote. Mine is that I only place things below No Award if I think that they genuinely do not deserve to be on the ballot. I have done that occasionally in years past, long before the Puppy Plague, and I’ll continue to do it now. Most years very little of what was on my nominating ballot makes it to the Finalist stage, so I’m very used to voting for things put on the ballot by other people. And as far as I am concerned, works by the likes of Al Reynolds and Neil Gaiman deserve to be on the ballot whether or not the Puppies put them on a slate.

This year most categories appear to have at least one Finalist that deserves a rocket, though Related Work looks to be a disaster zone which is sad because Letters to Tiptree surely deserved a Hugo.

You have until the end of the month to vote. Get in early, just in case the final rush causes the MidAmeriCon II servers to melt down under the last minute rush. You can always update your votes later if you want to.

There is also the Business Meeting to come, and the question of what we do with the Hugo rules. That deserves a post all of its own.