Sad Puppies

Campaign to End Puppy-Related Sadness

Logo for Sad Puppies 3
Formation	8 January 2013; 4 years ago (2013-01-08)
Founder	Larry Correia
Type	Internet activism
Purpose	Hugo Awards nominations
Key people	Larry Correia, Brad R. Torgersen, Kate Paulk, Sarah Hoyt
Formerly called	Sad Puppies Think of the Children Campaign

Sad Puppies is a voting campaign intended to influence the outcome of the annual Hugo Awards, the longest running prize (since 1953) for science fiction or fantasy works. It was initiated in 2013 by author Larry Correia by means of a voting bloc to get a specific novel nominated, and then through suggested slates in subsequent years (led by Correia in 2014, and then Brad R. Torgersen in 2015). Author Kate Paulk announced in March 2015 that she would be taking the helm of the campaign for the 2015–2016 year.

In 2013, it was an attempt to get one of Correia's novels nominated for the Hugo Award in order to "poke the establishment in the eye" by nominating "unabashed pulp action that isn’t heavy handed message fic". In subsequent years, it was a campaign to nominate works Correia—and later Torgersen—thought were more deserving, but which they stated had been unfairly passed over by Hugo voters in favor of more literary works, or stories with progressive political themes.

For the 2015 Hugos, the Sad Puppies and overlapping Rabid Puppies slates swept several entire categories of nominations, with all except one of those categories then being voted "No Award" at the Hugos.

Correia started the first Sad Puppies campaign in 2013 when he mentioned on his blog that one of his works, Monster Hunter Legion, was eligible for that year's Hugo Award for Best Novel. The name for the campaign originates in an SPCA ad featuring Sarah McLachlan, and a joke attributing puppy sadness to "boring message-fic winning awards". Correia's stated purposes for starting the campaign were to "poke the establishment in the eye" by nominating "unabashed pulp action that isn’t heavy handed message fic[tion]", and to "make literati critics spontaneously combust". The first campaign focused mainly on nominating Monster Hunter Legion, although Correia mentioned several times a list of eligible works from Baen Books, Correia's main publisher; along with a few other works mentioned in posts in which he indicated for whom he was voting.

This first campaign was not successful in getting Monster Hunter Legion nominated, though at 101 nominations it was only 17 nominations short of the final ballot cutoff.