Leaked emails show organizers of the prestigious Hugo Awards vetted writers’ work and comments with regard to China, where last year’s awards were held.
Organizers of the Hugo Awards, one of the most prominent literary awards in science fiction, excluded multiple authors from shortlists last year over concerns their work or public comments could be offensive to China, leaked emails show.
Questions had been raised as to why writers including Neil Gaiman, R.F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer had been deemed ineligible as finalists despite earning enough votes according to information published last month by awards organizers. Emails released this week revealed that they were concerned about how some authors might be perceived in China, where the Hugo Awards were held last year for the first time.
The ironic thing about parent comment is that for as much as it bashes the Hugos for being part of the “old guard,” they’ve actually been very good about surfacing and including queer- and minority- centric stories and works by authors with identities that have historically been excluded from the discussion. Arkady Martine won Best Novel in 2020 and 2022 with two entries in a series featuring a lesbian main character, with imperialism’s effects on those who are colonized as a major driver of the plot. Between 2016 and 2018 N.K. Jemisin swept the Best Novel award for successive entries of her Broken Earth trilogy, which revolved around themes of racism, environmental cataclysm, and slavery. The year before that the winner of Best Novel was Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem which was the first time a work originally published in Chinese won, and then the year before that Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice won, which created a massive uproar amongst the more reactionary types in SF fandom for positing a civilization where the only recognized gender was female (this is super unfair to the book, through, because there’s so much more going on thematically beyond that one small world-building choice!).
In fact, the way that the Hugo voting has swung noticeably towards exploring issues of imperialism, colonialism, and identity is what prompted the Sad Puppies campaign that OP mentions. What he doesn’t mention is that the Hugo voters overwhelmingly rejected that campaign, and the organization made changes to prevent any future attempts. That part of what makes what happened with the 2023 Hugos so surprising and appalling – it’s completely out of character with the recent history of the awards and the organization to meekly knuckle under and self-censor for fear of angering Chinese authorities, when it’s been so bold in standing up to outside influences so recently. I expect that steps will be taken to prevent a repeat occurrence.
Has there been a change in organizational staff to account for this?
Given that the news only just broke and organizational business has to be voted on at the next convention, it’s a bit soon to look for big moves – but Glasgow 2024 did make a statement that their Hugo Administrator who was involved in the 2023 awards was removed from her position.
I was actually asking about when the 2023 administrator started her position (was she there for a long time or newbie), in relation to when the event in China happened, but your information is actually good to know too, so thank you.
I had not been following this at all, so I was just wondering if new management came in and then this happened immediately, or was it old existing management that for whatever reason changed their mindset to allow something like that to happen later on.
Ah, my bad… There’s a core of people attached to Worldcon Intellectual Property who are supposed to support the hosting convention’s committee. This included Dave McCarty (who was removed from his position within WIP back in January as this situation evolved), and it seems like he pulled together a support team of experienced hands when it became clear that the Chengdu committee had not realized the extent of their responsibilities and couldn’t assemble a local Hugo committee capable of handling everything in the time available. So while it would be convenient to say “hey, the local committee is ultimately responsible for the way the Hugoa are run!” that’s only sort of true at the best-run of cons, and certainly not true in the case of Chengdu.
People who’ve been doing this for a long time and should have known better ran scared from the Chinese government’s censorship bureaucracy, for shortsighted and poorly justified reasons. The good news, such as it is, is that as that has been revealed the folks responsible have been removed from their positions, but it’s still disappointing to find out about. I worked with Dave McCarty in the runup to a previous Worldcon and I would have expected better of him.
Thank you for your time/ explanation.
Not sure why you are painting me as some intentionally misleading anti-hugo monster (or why you are caping for the Hugos) but… okay. You probably missed the part where I pointed out it is still a prestigious outlet that carries a lot of weight and even that the buy-in voting is a necessary evil. But hey, I am sure you missed that part while you decided to paint me as some mustache twirling villain.
Yes. More people of color and fewer cishet stories have been spotlighted. In large part because that is where SFF has gone. The very nature of SFF is to explore fantasy worlds through the lens of social issues. Always has been. And that is why the sad puppies “movement” became a thing. Because you basically had “This is the world as it is becoming” versus “Yeah, but what if strong men were still the heroes”. It was a symptom of the ever increasing conflicts that manifested as Gamergate in the video game space and the alt-right in “politics proper” as it were.
And yes. Jemisin swept in 2018. In 2020 we had George R R Martin shitting on the “ethnic” names while making it a point to talk about all the great transphobes and bigots who came before. Which continues to be the Hugo’s problem. Because they can’t control how the people vote. But they can make sure to highlight that it is still an old guard institution.
Amd, much like with the Oscars needing to give a rapist who fled the country a standing ovation every chance they get, any author who wants to have a career needs to grin and bear it because that translates to publisher deals and money.
And that is why I encourage people to actually go to the blogs of their favorite authors (because many have them these days) and read what they are recommending. It doesn’t have the same weight but it is also a way to sift through the bullshit without the vibe of “We aren’t racist. See, we gave an award to the black chick”