Leaked Emails Reveal Hugo Awards Ineligibility Details

Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford have released The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion, an extensive look at the irregularities in the recent Hugo Awards presented in Chengdu China.

Leaked emails from Diane Lacey, a member of the Hugo Award administration team, reveal that several works and authors that should have made the ballot were ruled ineligible for political reasons. Those works include Babel by R.F. Kuang, Paul Weimer for Fan Writer, and Xiran Jay Zhao for the Astounding Award.

From the report:

Emails and files released by one of the administrators of the 2023 Hugo Awards indicate that authors and works deemed “not eligible” for the awards were removed due to political considerations. In particular, administrators of the awards from the United States and Canada researched political concerns related to Hugo-eligible authors and works and discussed removing certain ones from the ballot for those reasons, revealing they were active participants in the censorship that took place.

Awards administrator Dave McCarty reportedly wrote in an email to the admin team,

In addition to the regular technical review, as we are happening in China and the *laws* we operate under are different…we need to highlight anything of a sensitive political nature in the work. It’s not necessary to read everything, but if the work focuses on China, taiwan, tibet, or other topics that may be an issue *in* China… that needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot (or) if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it…. At the moment, the best guidance I have is ‘mentions of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, negatives of China’. I will try to get better guidance when I have a chance to dig into this deeper with the Chinese folks on the committee.

Dossiers were apparently compiled on nominees by members of the admin team and researcher Kat Jones, pointing out potential issues with many works that were subsequently deemed ineligible (though the leaked documents did not indicate any reason for the exclusion of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman TV series).

Lacey wrote an apology for her part in the situation:

Let me start by saying that I am NOT making excuses, there are no adequate excuses. I am thoroughly ashamed of my part in this debacle, and I will likely never forgive myself. But the fans that have supported the Hugos, the nominees, and those that were unfairly and erroneously deemed ineligible in particular, deserve an explanation. Perhaps the only way I can even begin to ease my conscience is to provide one….

We were told to vet nominees for work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet, or other topics that may be an issue in China and, to my shame, I did so. Understand that I signed up fully aware that there were going to be issues. I am not that naïve regarding the Chinese political system, but I wanted the Hugos to happen, and not have them completely crash and burn. I just didn’t imagine that there would be so many issues, and that they’d be ultimately handled so poorly by [Hugo Award administrator] Dave [McCarty[ (Okay, so maybe I do have a certain level of naivete.)

Lacey also explains why the nominating data, usually released the night of the awards, was held back for the full 90 days allowed:

Dave insisted that there needed to be more time elapsed before the Chinese nationals would be safe from the ensuing uproar, and he made it clear from the time the finalist names were released that he intended to wait the entire 90 days. Are they safe now? I hope so, I truly do, but I can’t imagine that ensuing uproar and the international media attention that came along with it has done them any favors. As far as Dave’s apparent actions in cooking the results, I have to say I didn’t really expect that either. And if I had I, like many others have said, would have imagined he’d do a better job.

After the release of Barkley & Sanford’s report, Kat Jones published a letter expressing concern “that the confidential Hugo Award eligibility research work product that was ‘leaked’ to you may be incomplete or modified. And I am really shocked that this extremely extremely confidential material was shared in the first place.” Jones did research as instructed by the Adminstrator, but became concerned about the process and “did no further work for the Chengdu Worldcon after the first pass of eligibility research.”

Update: Many people in the field expressed surprise at the relative dearth of work by Chinese authors on the nomination list, and that has been explained, too. Lacey said ‘‘We were told there was collusion in a Chinese publication that had published a nominations list, a slate as it were, and so those ballots were identified and eliminated’’ That ‘‘slate’’ was reportedly an extensive list of recommendations published in Science Fiction World magazine, the leading SF magazine in China.

The complete report can be read at Sanford’s Patreon here or at File770.com.