Leaked Emails Show Hugo Awards Self-Censoring To Appease China (404media.co) 89
samleecole shares a report from 404 Media: A trove of leaked emails shows how administrators of one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction censored themselves because the awards ceremony was being held in China. Earlier this month, the Hugo Awards came under fire with accusations of censorship when several authors were excluded from the awards, including Neil Gaiman, R. F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao, and Paul Weimer. These authors' works had earned enough votes to make them finalists, but were deemed "ineligible" for reasons not disclosed by Hugo administrators. The Hugo Awards are one of the largest and most important science fiction awards. [...]
The emails, which show the process of compiling spreadsheets of the top 10 works in each category and checking them for "sensitive political nature" to see if they were "an issue in China," were obtained by fan writer Chris M. Barkley and author Jason Sanford, and published on fandom news site File 770 and Sanford's Patreon, where they uploaded the full PDF of the emails. They were provided to them by Hugo Awards administrator Diane Lacey. Lacey confirmed in an email to 404 Media that she was the source of the emails. "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," Dave McCarty, head of the 2023 awards jury, directed administrators in an email. "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 of if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it."
The email replies to this directive show administrators combing through authors' social media presences and public travel histories, including from before they were nominated for the 2023 awards, and their writing and bodies of work beyond just what they were nominated for. Among dozens of other posts and writings, they note Weimer's negative comments about the Chinese government in a Patreon post and misspell Zhao's name and work (calling their novel Iron Widow "The Iron Giant"). About author Naseem Jamnia, an administrator allegedly wrote, "Author openly describes themselves as queer, nonbinary, trans, (And again, good for them), and frequently writes about gender, particularly non-binary. The cited work also relies on these themes. I include them because I don't know how that will play in China. (I suspect less than well.)"
"As far as our investigation is concerned there was no reason to exclude the works of Kuang, Gaiman, Weimer or Xiran Jay Zhao, save for being viewed as being undesirable in the view of the Hugo Award admins which had the effect of being the proxies Chinese government," Sanford and Barkley wrote. In conjunction with the email trove, Sanford and Barkley also released an apology letter from Lacey, in which she explains some of her role in the awards vetting process and also blames McCarty for his role in the debacle. McCarty, along with board chair Kevin Standlee, resigned earlier this month.
The emails, which show the process of compiling spreadsheets of the top 10 works in each category and checking them for "sensitive political nature" to see if they were "an issue in China," were obtained by fan writer Chris M. Barkley and author Jason Sanford, and published on fandom news site File 770 and Sanford's Patreon, where they uploaded the full PDF of the emails. They were provided to them by Hugo Awards administrator Diane Lacey. Lacey confirmed in an email to 404 Media that she was the source of the emails. "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," Dave McCarty, head of the 2023 awards jury, directed administrators in an email. "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 of if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it."
The email replies to this directive show administrators combing through authors' social media presences and public travel histories, including from before they were nominated for the 2023 awards, and their writing and bodies of work beyond just what they were nominated for. Among dozens of other posts and writings, they note Weimer's negative comments about the Chinese government in a Patreon post and misspell Zhao's name and work (calling their novel Iron Widow "The Iron Giant"). About author Naseem Jamnia, an administrator allegedly wrote, "Author openly describes themselves as queer, nonbinary, trans, (And again, good for them), and frequently writes about gender, particularly non-binary. The cited work also relies on these themes. I include them because I don't know how that will play in China. (I suspect less than well.)"
"As far as our investigation is concerned there was no reason to exclude the works of Kuang, Gaiman, Weimer or Xiran Jay Zhao, save for being viewed as being undesirable in the view of the Hugo Award admins which had the effect of being the proxies Chinese government," Sanford and Barkley wrote. In conjunction with the email trove, Sanford and Barkley also released an apology letter from Lacey, in which she explains some of her role in the awards vetting process and also blames McCarty for his role in the debacle. McCarty, along with board chair Kevin Standlee, resigned earlier this month.
Awards Shows ? Hugo Girl! (Score:2)
This all sounds very 1990's.
We don't really need opinion gatekeepers anymore.
Re:Awards Shows ? Hugo Girl! (Score:5, Insightful)
You never needed opinion gatekeepers, they just happen to be very helpful if you value your limited reading time. More works are published than you can read, and not all of them are worth your eye blinks and brain cycles.
Re:Awards Shows ? Hugo Girl! (Score:5, Interesting)
I read French. In the month of September 2023, 321 original novels were published in French, out of which 74 first-time authors; additionally 145 novels were published in translation. Source https://www.livreshebdo.fr/art... [livreshebdo.fr] . There is no way to know the know the value of the 74 first-time authors and it's still a lot to read, the only solution is to follow advice from someone. Here are some options:
* Amazon reviews. Ridiculously flawed in my opinion, but up to you to decide.
* trust the publishers. Find a book publishing house that matches your taste. Ultimately you follow the advice of an editor-in-chief
* trust the bookshop "new arrivals" shelves. You follow the opinion of a book seller with an immediate financial interest in books that sell well
* individual advice from friends. If you enjoy socialization at the town's readers club; not for me
* columnists from a daily or reviewers from a specialized magazine or blog
* annual prizes, such as the Nobel, the Pulitzer, and whatever is a famed prize valid in your reading language
I argue the annual prizes are the best (the least flawed) option.
1) they are awarded by a collective of columnists/reviewers/journalists, such that their possible individual bias and financial interests balance out.
2) they have a fame to keep as they compete between the different collectives to be the most trusted prize. There are two dozen categories in prizes in my reading language (most known: Goncourt, Renaudot, Fémina, Interallié). If the Hugo award has lost their fame for you, just pick another one, maybe one of the PEN literary award categories.
Amazon review is much better than prize (Score:2)
I would rather trust amazon review comapred to Hugo or similar prizes. Why ? Because of the mass of opinion. One Amazon review ? Ridiculous to trust. But as you add review numbers, assuming no ballot stuffing, then you get a regression toward the mean. And contrary to prize, they cover hundreds of book per year. With prize
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I would rather trust amazon review comapred to Hugo or similar prizes.
Agreed, but the award prize winners are often worth checking out reviews for, so there's that :)
As for reviews you should check goodreads as well, the reviews there are frequently more critical, especially to lack of proofreading/editing/copyediting. I often see books being praised to the sky on amazon.com, only to read several reviews on goodreads pointing out things like missing words or sentences that doesn't make sence in every other paragraph. There are enough books to read, I won't deal with non-proof
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You are missing the best way to filter out good books (and art in general): wait hundred years and if it is still considered relevant you read it (listen/look etc). Look up the Lindy effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Sorry, but that's bullshit. And yes, I've paid attention to the Hugos since before you were born.
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Yes, but now we can get opinions from other fans for free over the internet instead of depending on organizations.
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Yes, but now we can get opinions from other fans for free over the internet instead of depending on organizations.
So I can find out from Buttsniffer00769 that he thinks some book "slaps"? No thanks. The people at Hugo responsible for this are gone and hopefully this means they've got their shit back together. Filtering the general publics views through Hugos paid gate for voting acts as enough of a filter to make their judgements more reliable in my eyes than simply aggregating general public opinion as it leaves the voting largely in the hands of adult enthusiasts who have their lives together enough to put together t
Re:Awards Shows ? Hugo Girl! (Score:4, Funny)
So I can find out from Buttsniffer00769 that he thinks some book "slaps"? No thanks.
I can't force you to be more discerning, but I can mock your fallaciously ridiculous example.
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Wading through the general publics reviews to try to find something that seems insightful is an exercise in wading through user reviews just like my example.
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Not to mention wading through all those user reviews is work I dont have to do if I go with Huge suggestions which means more time reading sci fi.
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You never needed opinion gatekeepers, they just happen to be very helpful if you value your limited reading time.
Not really. Critics have always sucked, and have always reviewed works according to their personal tastes and biases. This goes for books critics, art critics, film critics, you name it.
The best books move according to the way they always have: word of mouth. If something is really good, eventually, enough people notice it to say so, loudly, and other people start reading the works. There are no end of writers, musicians, artists, etc, that were shunned by "experts", and broke through because admirers sprea
Why go to China? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously they knew what controls they were implementing. And that they were being politically biased in the selection process.
It begs the question of why do it in China at all? It's not like the awards needed to be in a particular location to be effective. Was there extra funding than usual? If so, who benefited the most? Or was it all just a stunt to create a news piece?
Re:Why go to China? (Score:5, Informative)
Worldcon. The Hugos are presented as part of Worldcon... which was in China last year.
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You could not though. If the board feels that worldcon has chosen a politically repressive venue antithetical to the values of the SF community it could present them elsewhere in protest.
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"You could not though."
No, not really. The Hugos are an integral part of worldcon. The "board" you are talking about is the same worldcon board that chose China in the first place.
Re:Why go to China? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the board feels that worldcon has chosen a politically repressive venue antithetical to the values of the SF community it could present them elsewhere in protest.
Unfortunately, the worldcon rules are unambiguous that the convention committee hosting the Worldcon runs the Hugos. There is no "board" that can decide to present them elsewhere.
The rules were obviously written without expecting this case.
This is a very big deal in the SF world, and a lot of people are talking about what to do to prevent this recurring. We can expect that there will be some serious proposals for rules changes at the next business meeting, which is the next Worldcon (in Scotland). In the meantime, the Glasgow worldcon has issued a statement about how they wil: ensure transparency: https://glasgow2024.org/chairs... [glasgow2024.org]
Re:Why go to China? (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the same question. Where next? Russia? Saudi Arabia?
For an award that recognizes imaginative writing, why hold them in countries that punish free speech?
Re:Why go to China? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all about the rules of Worldcon.
It moves around, based on the votes of the attendees.
China put enough votes together (by buying a lot of memberships) to get it in China. It all went downhill from there.
It would take a major change in the rules to make this impossible in the future. And yes, your two nasty examples are technically in the running (in theory).
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The rules may allow it...but rules can be changed and you can simply refund the memberships and tell them to pound sand.
A writing celebration that tolerates *censorship* is kinda the stuff of, ahem, fiction?
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Well, how about the situation of "no one expected it"?
The rules say the voters pick the next location. They picked China. This suddenly brings up a lot of concerns.
Unfortunately, you can't retroactively go and say "we're d
Re: Why go to China? (Score:1)
simple answer, restrict to places that actually respect and enforce freedom of expression. It's not a hard thing. Or become the NAZI bar.
Re: Why go to China? (Score:1)
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Who could "just deem certain countries ineligible for human rights issues"? Who decides, and on what criteria?
I guarantee that if you invent the power to define countries ineligible "for human rights issues," some people will try to ban Worldcons in, for example, the United States.
The Streisand Affect (Score:2)
indeed (Score:3)
indeed.
A story that would offend the CCP already has something going for it . . .
hawk, now smiling at the notion of Pournelle or Heinlein getting nominated at a convention there . . .
Practical? Maybe. Honerable? You decide. (Score:2)
I hadn't been following this story. Can someone fill me in on why they were holding their event in China in the first place?
Re:Practical? Maybe. Honerable? You decide. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does anyone doe business with China?
Money.
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Not necessarily. Some do business with China because they were non-discriminatory in how they applied their rules, and then countries like China either game the system, or come out ahead because of their sheer population size. That's what happened in this case. Worldcon and the Hugos go where the votes are, China got the most votes, there were no rules baring it behing held in China. Nothing more, nothing less. There was no additional money to be made by going to China and it wasn't Worldcon's decision to g
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Why does anybody do business with ANYBODY?
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Because Chinese fans, who had bid to hold the Worldcon - and there are a *lot* of them - won the vote, held at the Worldcon two years in advance.
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Thanks for the answer as I was wondering as well.
Seems like they need new rules about limiting country choices to those that will not impose limitations on what can be voted on then.
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Fu Manchu created an amazing secret tunnel through the core of the Earth and stole the contest from where it is usually held (probably a cheap lot just outside Hollywood, or a warehouse near London).
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Fu Manchu created an amazing secret tunnel through the core of the Earth and stole the contest from where it is usually held (probably a cheap lot just outside Hollywood, or a warehouse near London).
Pedantic nitpick: If you bore through the core from China, you come out in Argentina.
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Directional Drilling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://drillers.com/direction... [drillers.com]
Sadder Puppies (Score:3, Funny)
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Why did the Hugo's have any shred of credibility to lose, exactly? We've known this is who they are for years.
Imagine how the FBI and NSA goes through it (Score:4, Interesting)
Judging by a small sample of the first few pages of the emails at the level of details just these award administrators ( award administrators!) went through in these authors' lives (both recent and past stuff), I can only imagine the level of details the 3-letter agencies go through with everyone else's pasts.
"Formerly most prestigious award", I take it then (Score:5, Insightful)
Because this sort of crap pretty much is fundamentally incompatible with "prestigious".
Phht sure. (Score:5, Interesting)
Next you're going to say that they're manipulating the award process to virtue signal.
Obviously, THAT's unpossible.
Let's take a page out of scifi and imagine (Score:2)
The year is 1985. Richard Nixon is serving his fourth non-consecutive term in office. And the autuer director John Milius's critically-acclaimed box-office hit Red Dawn is widely assumed to be up for Best Picture award. Except that this year, in a bid to get some of them juicy roubles, the Oscars are being held in Leningrad...
Wouldn't it make more sense (Score:5, Insightful)
To just NOT hold the ceremony in a place unfriendly to the ideals of Sci-Fi and the award rather than destroying the award itself?
Who is going to lend any credence to a Hugo award now?
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To just NOT hold the ceremony in a place unfriendly to the ideals of Sci-Fi and the award rather than destroying the award itself?
And where would that be? China has a huge Sci-Fi fan base. Worldcon and the Hugos go where the Sci-Fi fans, specifically members of the World Science Fiction Society, vote it to go. The fact of the matter is a majority of the fans previously selected they wanted it to be in China next.
Does that sounds like a Sci-Fi unfriendly place to you, the place with the most fans? And before you talk about dictators, democracy, and censorship, there is more Sci-Fi out there that deals with those kinds of dystopias than
Re:Wouldn't it make more sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that they destroyed the integrity of the award, the price of China was too high.
The Sci-Fi that deals in dystopias do not ADVOCATE for those dystopias. There are way too many story lines in Sci-Fi where someone makes too many concessions to dystopia and so becomes part of it's driving force.
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Or prospect, given Hollywood's helping to export censorship. Well, Hollywood and pro sports and video games.
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It was easy for them to see the very instant they asked themselves the question "Can we include this work? China won't like it" and the answer was "better not". That was the point where plans needed to change, even if they had to postpone to do it.
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The people who compiled the list of potential winners and "disqualified" some of them.
They could have returned a list containing only A.A. Milne
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Considering that they destroyed the integrity of the award, the price of China was too high.
Again there was no choice. The Worldcon constitution does not discriminate by country, policy or in any way other than to make sure the next Worldcon is at least 500miles away from the previous one. Chinese people voted for it to be in China, because they have a huge SciFi community. That doesn't make them SciFi unfriendly.
The fact that the integrity of the award was breached to comply with local laws doesn't make the country SciFi unfriendly - to be clear, SciFi books won the award, and none of the authors
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The Chinese PEOPLE are not unfriendly to Sci-Fi. The Chinese government certainly IS.
Unless you can tell me that the administrators of the awards had someone kick in their doors, put a bag over their heads, and throw them in the trunk, there WAS a choice. They managed to ignore their own criteria for choosing the winners, are you telling me they were bound by physical law to ignore only that?
Other options might have included simply not announcing the more locally controversial winners until later. Or announ
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Who is going to lend any credence to a Hugo award now?
Winnie The Pooh
Let them fade away into their hubris. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I doubt it, they probably had handlers in China giving them honest or dishonest sob stories how the lives of them and Chinese readers would be impacted if the CCP looked negatively on worldcon.
As for social censorship, I don't recall non eligiblility coming up. The attendees voted to not give an award.
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The people running the Hugo's are a bunch of weak little weeds blowing in whatever direction their current political and social wind blows.
The "people running the Hugos" are the convention committee of whatever fan group has won the bid to host the worldcon (or the group of administrators appointed by that group.)
They set a standard that has nothing to do with the competency and quality of the authors.
Neither true nor untrue. The "standard" is that the awards go to the authors that the fans who attend worldcons like. Each person voting has the ability to decide what they consider "the competency and quality" of the works. Yes, there are people out there who think that the works fans vote for is more a popularity contest than a cons
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Disgusting (Score:2)
What would be an absolute coup for the Chinese government: Go public with this, tell the world that they never demanded any censoring but that it is all the result of decadent westerners self-censoring (and that might even be true) and publish all authors together with the number of votes they received.
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What would be an absolute coup for the Chinese government: Go public with this, tell the world that they never demanded any censoring
You are saying they should lie? What would be a coup about that? We expect them to lie.
Re: Disgusting (Score:2)
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There is plenty of evidence that the Hugo award committees censored people. There is little evidence that China asked for it. There is a distinct possibility that we have a group of deluded cowards who censored themselves because they believed it was expected.
It is China. That is was expected is a given.
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Except in a dictatorship the people you interact with as a foreigner are infested with secret police. China making no written demands is meaningless, it's an influence game. They will know what's expected without demand and it does come from government.
again 404 closed media (Score:1)
Where's the line between localization and bulling? (Score:2)
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China needs to stop taking itself so seriously.
Sure China just needs dramatically change their culture and systems of social organization so they can get a long with the rest of us.
I totally agree, I also recognize, the only way it happens is isolation and defeat. As long as the world continues to engage China on China's terms they see it as vindication of their (to us) anti-social behavior. China is a never going to embrace a less top down, more small-L-liberalization of thought until the rest of us disengage.
They *might* stay the course on more open
Fuck the Chinese government (Score:1)
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Won't happen. Their rocket fuel tanks are full of water because of their military's rampant corruption.
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Won't happen. Their rocket fuel tanks are full of water because of their military's rampant corruption.
Apparently not; last year China launched 54 orbital missions with 53 successes and one failure (as of end of November).
https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]
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I'm referring to the nukes sitting in silos. https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
Whores. (Score:1)
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Money is not involved in the selection of where to host the Hugos, and indeed the Hugos nor Worldcon have any say in the matter. It is voted for by members.
If money was involved it was because China *spent* money, not because anyone else stood to gain any.
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In your imagination, who got the money that China spent?
Forget China (Score:2)
US is far worse (Score:1)
Alphabet agencies working with social media companies to engage in mass censorship on everything from Hunter's laptop to covid. And it's not China trying to send a journalist to prison for nearly two centuries for revealing its war crimes.
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You know that's a myth, along with Trump saying people should inject bleach to fight covid?
so Hugo awards was tainted this year (Score:2)
In other words, the winners may not have won if the contest was fair and not politically tainted.
Charlie Stross's comments (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.antipope.org/charl... [antipope.org]
You've probably seen news reports that the Hugo awards handed out last year at the world science fiction convention in Chengdu were rigged. For example: Science fiction awards held in China under fire for excluding authors.
The Guardian got bits of the background wrong, but what's undeniably true is that it's a huge mess. And the key point the press and most of the public miss is that they seem to think there's some sort of worldcon organization that can fix this.
Spoiler: there isn't.
obvious next steps (Score:2)
I think I speak for everyone here when I say it is clear that this McCarty (wtf a McCarty opposing free speech FOR communists?! is life weird or what man?) at the very least should be detained and investigated; if he is acting as an agent of China (imho this is reflexively obvious but we need the appearance of law to justify our high-mindedness), he should be executed and deported.
Why is anyone surprised by this? (Score:3)