Hugo Awards Tampering Expanded

Hugo tampering was previously reported, but is updated and expanded below:

On February 14, 2024, Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford 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, including a set of leaked emails from Diane Lacey, one of the awards eligibility researchers. The earlier release of the Hugo Awards nomination numbers on January 20 had revealed numerous anomalies and mysteries, and since then there has been widespread commentary, debate, and argument online speculating about what happened. Some questions have now been answered, but others remain.

The nomination statistics showed several works and individuals were ruled ineligible without any explanation, including Babel by R.F. Kuang, ‘‘Fogong Temple Pagoda’’ by Hai Ya, Paul Weimer for Fan Writer, and Astounding nominee Xiran Jay Zhao. There was also a surprising lack of Chinese works included on the short list. None of the affected authors knew why they were deemed ineligible, and no explanation was provided. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman TV series received many nominations for both Long and Short Dramatic Presentation, but Season 1 was removed from consideration for Long because one of the episodes had more votes in the Short category… but then the episode was marked ‘‘not eligible’’ for the Short award, for reasons not explained. As a result, Sandman was dropped from both categories.

Hugo Awards administrator Dave McCarty largely stonewalled the ensuing clamor of questions from the community, saying ‘‘After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible,’’ and continued to repeat this phrase, saying it was the only explanatory comment he was authorized to give and that the wording had been agreed upon in conjunction with other members of the committee. He was occasionally insulting to those asking questions, later apologizing for his behavior. When pressed for details by Publishers Lunch, McCarty denied that the Chinese government pressured the administrators: ‘‘I have seen a few people suggest that government officials told us what to do, but such was not the case. The Hugo administration team, with me at the head, made all the eligibility determinations.’’ In the February 4 interview conducted by Barkley on File 770, McCarty clarified that national-level government was not involved, ‘‘except insofar as the government says what the laws are in the country.’’ The interview is available at <file770.com/barkley-so-glad-you-didnt-ask-81/>

LEAKED EMAILS

Leaked emails from Diane Lacey, a member of the Hugo Award administration team, reveal that works and authors that should have made the ballot were ruled ineligible for political reasons.

From the Barkley & Sanford 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.

It is unclear where the initial push to conduct censorship activities came from, but in the emails McCarty alludes to ‘‘guidance’’ received in a comment stating ‘‘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.’’ In the February 4 interview with Barkley, McCarty refers to Joe Yao as his ‘‘Chinese counterpart’’ and says, ‘‘ He was my other half and so all of these decisions we made together. However because I had more experience… the decisions were ultimately mine.’’ Dossiers were apparently compiled on the top ten English-language nominees by American and Canadian members of the admin team.

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.)

After the release of Barkley & Sanford’s report, Kat Jones published a letter expressing concern that the confidential Hugo Award eligibility research material that was leaked might be incomplete or modified. ‘‘And I am really shocked that this extremely extremely confidential material was shared in the first place.’’ Jones did eligibility research as instructed by McCarty, but became concerned about the process and wrote on June 7, ‘‘I’m pointing out examples… out of an abundance of caution, because I’m assuming we’re talking about the safety of our Chinese con-running friends when we’re making these evaluations.’’ However, no confirmation of her assumption appears in the materials. That letter is here: <file770.com/2023-hugo-awards-related-statement-by-kat-jones>.

Both Jones and Lacey repeatedly expressed they didn’t feel they had any expertise to make determinations on the situation or sufficient guidance to make assessments. Lacey: ‘‘No idea if it might be viewed as a negative in China.’’ Jones: ‘‘flagging out of abundance of caution since it does mention the Chinese government and talks about Chinese history, and I don’t have knowledge of what would be problematic.’’ This preliminary research appears to have been conducted under considerable time pressure, with the available emails covering a period of three days from June 5-7, and also seems to contain many inaccuracies, such as saying Paul Weimer visited Tibet when in fact he traveled to Nepal.

Jones had been posted as the Hugo Awards administrator for the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow. On February 15, Glasgow chair Esther MacCallum-Stewart announced Jones’s resignation and other steps being taken by the concom:

As Chair of Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for Our Futures, I unreservedly apologise for the damage caused to nominees, finalists, the community, and the Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards.

Kat Jones has resigned with immediate effect as Hugo Administrator from Glasgow 2024 and has been removed from the Glasgow 2024 team across all mediums.

I acknowledge the deep grief and anger of the community and I share this distress.

I, and Glasgow 2024, do not know how any of the eligibility decisions for the Hugo, Lodestar and Astounding Awards held at the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention were reached. We know no more than is already in the public domain.

At Glasgow 2024 we are taking the following steps to ensure transparency and to attempt to redress the grievous loss of trust in the administration of the Awards.

The steps we are committing to are:

1) When our final ballot is published by Glasgow 2024, in late March or early April 2024, we will also publish the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists, and any withdrawals of potential finalists from the ballot.

2) Full voting results, nominating statistics and voting statistics will be published immediately after the Awards ceremony on 11th August 2024.

3) The Hugo administration subcommittee will also publish a log explaining the decisions that they have made in interpreting the WSFS Constitution immediately after the Awards ceremony on 11th August 2024.

MISSING CHINESE BALLOTS

Many people in the field also expressed surprise at the relative dearth of work by Chinese authors on the nomination list. 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. It seems that SF World may have provided the list at least in part because English-language attendees, eager to learn more about what Chinese creators they should be supporting, encouraged them to. One source who made such a recommendation said, ‘‘I definitely spoke with SFW staff and reminded them to send out a recommendation list including deserving nominees from around the world because their readers might not be familiar with them…. I had wondered why there were fewer finalists from China in some categories.’’

A Chinese language post by Zionius of the Zion in Ulthos blog released an analysis of the removals. In File 770 comments, zionius gave a translation of key points:

Content censorship does seem to have an impact on the final shortlist, but the greater impact is likely to be from invalid votes. The opinions of the censors are neglected most of the time (though here we can only see detailed opinions from Western censors), whereas with like 1000 votes declared invalid, the shortlist can be completely changed. None of the top 5 best novels in initial shortlist got through to the final shortlist. In the initial shortlist of the five print fiction categories, 2/3 works are from China, the final shortlist has only 2/15 Chinese works.

The items suffered most from invalid votes basically come from two Chinese publishers, Qidian and Science Fiction World. SFW’s recommendation list is almost identical to the initial shortlist in the Chinese part, which might be the reason why the Hugo team decided to remove most votes related to SFW and Qidian. Slates in thousands is beyond the capacity of EPH.

Zionius explored other points including the presence of an ‘‘invitation list’’ in the validation spreadsheet, a separate ranked list that appeared to have a big impact on the final shortlist. The Chinese language post is here, and can be run through Google translate: <zionius.wordpress.com/2024/02/15/2023-hugo-awards-censorship-analysis/>.

There is no provision in the WSFS constitution to remove slates from the ballot, or to handle any other types of convergent voting, aside from the EPH system, which was introduced after the Puppy controversy and was intended to handle the bloc voting vulnerability without needing to make slates illegal. However, a large enough voting bloc would overcome the EPH system. McCarty claims the changes he made were justified by WSFS rule 3.8.2, ‘‘The Worldcon Committee shall determine the eligibility of nominees and assignment to the proper category of works nominated in more than one category,’’ which he apparently has very broadly interpreted to mean the committee can arbitrarily determine eligibility. General consensus agrees that the rule is intended to instruct the committee to conduct an eligibility review according to the Constitution, not to make arbitrary determinations of eligibility or disqualifications.

 

THE NUMBERS

The nomination numbers themselves demonstrate many curiosities, and don’t follow the usual statistical patterns for Hugo nominations. Cora Buhlert summarized many of the anomalies in a post here: <corabuhlert.com/2024/01/21/the-2023-hugo-nomination-statistics-have-finally-been-release-and-we-have-questions/>. Heather Rose Jones also did a statistical survey of the last few years of Hugos, highlighting discrepancies: <alpennia.com/blog/comparison-hugo-nomination-distribution-statistics>. Investigations into the numbers continue – Jones said on Facebook, ‘‘It would have been satisfying if the oblique references to nullifying the SF World Rec List provided an explanation for some of the observable oddities about the nomination data, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Out of the 19 categories, the SF World recs only appear in 11 categories. In only five categories do we have an intersection of SFW recs and the ‘‘cliff’’ distribution that implies slate voting. The most dramatic ‘‘cliff’’ occurred for Best Series, which was absent from the SFW recommendations entirely.’’

 

RESPONSES

R.F. Kuang’s public statement on the issue appeared on her Instagram page:

I wish to clarify that no reason for Babel’s ineligibility was given to me or my team. I did not decline a nomination, as no nomination was offered.

Until one is provided that explains why the book was eligible for the Nebula and Locus awards, which it won, and not the Hugos, I assume this was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility. Excluding ‘‘undesirable’’ work is not only embarrassing for all involved parties, but renders the entire process and organization illegitimate. Pity.

That’s all from me. I have books to write.

Neil Gaiman posted on Bluesky that he agreed with Kuang: ‘‘This is how I feel about Sandman Episode 6, with the addition that it wouldn’t have been my award, but an award for everyone who made it.  That the episode was deemed mysteriously ineligible just makes the 2023 Hugo Awards feel shady.’’

Xiran Jay Zhao was ruled ineligible for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, despite being a nominee last year, in their first year of eligibility. They posted, ‘‘wait wait wait I just found out RF Kuang and I were deliberately excluded from the Hugo Awards in Chengdu last year for unspecified reasons despite having the votes to be finalists in our categories??’’ on X (formerly Twitter).

Paul Weimer also confirmed that he didn’t decline the nomination for Fan Writer, and said on social media site Bluesky that the release of the statistic was ‘‘the first time I heard I was ineligible, so this is coming as a nasty surprise.’’ He said, ‘‘I want answers. I’m owed answers.’’

Kevin Standlee, who is heavily involved in WSFS, wrote a post on Livejournal called ‘‘Elections Have Consequences’’ that seemed to place the blame on Chinese laws:

Worldcons have to obey the laws of the place in which they are held, no matter what their governing documents say. An overwhelming majority of the members of WSFS who voted on the site of the 2023 Worldcon (at the 2021 Worldcon in DC) selected Chengdu, China as the host of the 2023 Worldcon. That meant that the members of WSFS who expressed an opinion accepted that the convention would be held under Chinese legal conditions. Furthermore, those people (including me) who suggested that there might be election irregularities were overridden, shouted down, fired from their convention positions, and told that they were evil and probably racist for even suggesting such a thing.

Worldcon Intellectual Property (WIP), the non-profit that holds the service marks for the World Science Fiction Society and the Hugo Awards, released a statement on January 31, 2024. The WIP is the only permanent committee in the WSFS. Their release reads:

W.I.P. takes very seriously the recent complaints about the 2023 Hugo Award process and complaints about comments made by persons holding official positions in W.I.P. ….

Dave McCarty has resigned as a Director of W.I.P.

Kevin Standlee has resigned as Chair of the W.I.P. Board of Directors (BoD).

W.I.P. has censured or reprimanded the following persons, listed in alphabetic order, for the reason given:

Dave McCarty – censured for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.

Chen Shi – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.

Kevin Standlee – reprimanded for public comments that mistakenly led people to believe that we are not servicing our marks.

Ben Yalow – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.

Donald Eastlake has been elected Chair of the W.I.P. BoD.

Ben Yalow, co-chair of Chengdu Worldcon, is no longer listed on the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon staff page, though he was previously an advisor to the chair.

Many Chinese fans were reportedly also upset about the situation, with many posting questions on sites there. At one point, reports said the word ‘‘Worldcon’’ was being blocked on some social media sites in China. File 770 posted a piece from Chinese fan Zimozi Natsuco about the situation: <file770.com/zimozi-natsuco-guest-post-the-hugo-awards-evil-fall-is-a-watered-down-affair-and-certain-issues-to-watch-out-for>.

Cheryl Morgan, who is deeply involved with WSFS, wrote,

At this point I think WSFS is dead in the water. It can’t enforce its own constitution, and the social contract by which Worldcons agreed to adhere to the Constitution anyway has been broken. The only possible remedy is anathema to too many people in fandom. I’m not sure we can get out of this.

The ‘‘anathema’’ solution would be for WSFS to incorporate. For more details, see her post: <www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=29408>.

A number of solutions have been presented online, with most calling for more transparency and oversight, and for decoupling the awards from the convention. Barkley suggested that the ‘‘administration of the Hugo Awards must be completely severed from the control or influence of the individual Worldcon convention committees or any governmental, judicial, legislative or law enforcement bodies of the hosting country.’’

The controversy has spread beyond the usual fandom circles and made international news, including articles in mainstream venues like The Guardian, the NBC News website, and Esquire. Mike Glyer’s File 770 and Sanford’s Genre Grapevine column (<jasonsanford.substack.com>) have thoroughly documented the controversy in real time, with extensive links and commentary, including comments from Chinese fans, for readers who want more details and updates.