The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in April

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in April

Hugo Award Black GateLooking over our traffic stats for last month, I want to give a shout-out to M Harold Page, who managed to heroically crack the Top 10 without once mentioning the Hugo Awards or Rabid Puppies. Well done, Mr. Page!

He was the only one to accomplish that extraordinary feat, however. Every other article in the Top 10 for April (and more than a few in the Top 25) directly addressed the ongoing Hugo Awards controversy, which began on April 4th when Worldcon announced the nominees for the 2015 Hugo Awards — a group which usually represents the finest science fiction and fantasy of the year, but this year was largely dictated by a single individual, Vox Day (Theo Beale), and his Rabid Puppy supporters, who crammed the slate with 11 nominees from Theo’s tiny publishing house, Castalia House, and nominated Vox Day personally for two Hugo Awards.

Not coincidentally, Black Gate received the first Hugo nomination in our history, and one of our bloggers, Matthew David Surridge, was nominated for Best Fan Writer, both as a direct result of being included on the Rabid Puppy slate. We declined those nominations, for reasons that I think should be fairly obvious.

The most popular article on the BG blog last month — indeed, one of the most popular posts in our history — was Matthew’s “A Detailed Explanation,” in which he analyzed the extraordinary events around this year’s Hugo nominations, and enumerated the reasons why he declined science fiction’s highest honor. It the few weeks since it has been posted, it has been read over 50,000 times.

The second most popular article in April was our formal notification that Black Gate had withdrawn from Hugo consideration, which was read over 25,000 times.

Our original April 5th post on the Hugo nomination, “Black Gate Nominated for a Hugo Award in a Terrible Ballot,” was the third most popular piece, followed by our analysis, “Sad Puppies and Super Puppies: The 2015 Hugo Train Wreck.”

Rounding out the Top 5 was Scott Taylor’s Pro-Puppy piece, “Art of the Genre: The Art of Sad Puppies.”

The complete list of Top Articles for April follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular blog categories for the month.

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in April were:

  1. A Detailed Explanation
  2. Black Gate Withdraws From Hugo Consideration
  3. Black Gate Nominated for a Hugo Award in a Terrible Ballot
  4. Sad Puppies and Super Puppies: The 2015 Hugo Train Wreck
  5. Art of the Genre: The Art of Sad Puppies
  6. Philip Sandifer’s Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: An Analysis of Theodore Beale and his Supporters
  7. The Proxy Culture War for the Soul of Middle Earth
  8. Marko Kloos and Annie Bellet Withdraw From the Hugo Ballot
  9. Fantasy Literature: Murder Hobos, Sad Puppies, and Change
  10. Retro Review: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Edmond Hamilton’s Galaxy

     

  11. Why I Was So, So Wrong about the Standard Fantasy Setting
  12. Connie Willis Declines to Be a 2015 Hugo Award Presenter
  13. The Future of Fantasy: April New Releases
  14. Sex and Violence in Poul Anderson’s Rogue Sword
  15. Choice of the Petal Throne
  16. There Will be Blood Books
  17. The Definitive Guide to Selling Books sans InterWebs
  18. Forbes on What’s Next For The New Dungeons & Dragons
  19. The Best Pulp Horror and Weird Tales: The Fantasy Catalog of Hippocampus Press
  20. Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois

     

  21. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Dragons, Elves, and Heroes edited by Lin Carter
  22. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: What Story Should You Read First?
  23. The Three Phases of Marvel’s Adam Warlock, Part Two: The Magus Saga
  24. Thrift Shop Adventures 1: Wherein I Find Fantasy Treasures in Secondhand Stores (Greyhawk Classics and More!)
  25. Pretty Deadly: The Song of Death-Faced Ginny
  26. Amazon.com Returns to 1999 for April Fool’s Day
  27. The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in March
  28. Eastercon 66: Fun and Friction in Science Fiction
  29. 80′s Barbarian Showdown: Conan vs. Beastmaster
  30. The Omnibus Volumes of H. Beam Piper

     

  31. The 2015 Hugo Nominations
  32. Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1952: A Retro-Review
  33. How I Discovered David Drake by Accident: Confusion, Redliners, and Why I’m Glad I Made a Mistake
  34. A Gemmel-esque Adventure in a World of Sand: Hugo Nominee Timothy C. Ward’s Scavenger: Evolution
  35. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Conan of Venarium
  36. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Peter O’Toole as Holmes
  37. Adventures In Straw Polls: Fear, Lovecraft, and Me
  38. One Picture = One Thousand Words…?
  39. Future Science Fiction, July 1953: A Retro-Review
  40. Vintage Treasures: Madouc by Jack Vance

     

  41. Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction: The Great Years, Volume II edited by Carol and Frederik Pohl
  42. Vintage Treasures: Razored Saddles, edited by Joe R. Lansdale
  43. Coode Street Podcast Reveals that K.J. Parker is Tom Holt
  44. Adventures In Near-Future Sci-Fi: Black Mirror
  45. The April Fantasy Magazine Rack
  46. Vengeful Specters, Vampires, and Monster Worms: Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson
  47. Vintage Treasures: Sturgeon is Alive and Well… by Theodore Sturgeon
  48. Clarkesworld 103 now on Sale
  49. Collecting Lovecraft, Part III: The Arkham Hardcovers
  50. The Fantasy and Science Fiction Films of Thomas Edison

The top categories last month were:

  1. New Treasures
  2. Books
  3. Fiction
  4. Blog Entry
  5. Convention Report
  6. Editor’s Blog
  7. Magazines
  8. Conan
  9. Contest
  10. Vintage Treasures
  11. Music
  12. Reviews
  13. Pulp
  14. Art of the Genre
  15. Comics
  16. Fashion
  17. Essays
  18. Art
  19. Game Reviews
  20. BG Staff

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in March are here, and you can see all 119 posts we made in the month of April here.

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