Leaked Emails Point to Self-Censorship in the Chengdu Hugo Awards Controversy

By Nate Parker | Books | February 16, 2024 |

By Nate Parker | Books | February 16, 2024 |

Over on file770, Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford have put together a comprehensive report on what went wrong during the 2023 Hugo Awards in Chengdu, China, and it’s devastating to the Award administrators’ credibility. Hugo administrator Diane Lacey released an apology letter through the authors that includes multiple emails in which Dave McCarty, the admin at the center of this controversy, outlines the political parameters under which authors and their works were investigated prior to their inclusion in the awards. McCarty told the other administrators to search social media, past interviews, and selected works for themes that might make their host country unhappy. It’s fantastic and you should read the entire thing here, but this is the important bit:

In an email from Dave McCarty dated June 5, 2023, he announced to the Hugo Award administration group that “This is us, the group of folks that are validating the Hugo finalists.”

None of the Chinese members of the administration team were listed as recipients in any of the emails examined for this report, only administrators who were from Western countries.

After discussing technical details of the work in the June 5th email, McCarty wrote “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.”

On June 5, Kat Jones asked McCarty for a “list or a resource you can point us to that elaborates on ‘other topics that may be an issue *in* China’?”

McCarty responded on June 5 at 7:18 pm saying “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.”

Kat Jones, who has since offered an explanation here, and Diane Lacey worked with McCarty to find potential issues with nominees’ work. Both have stated, in essence, that they didn’t realize the lengths to which the results were being cooked. Jones appears as concerned that Lacey is that the votes were manipulated. That may be because in her emails, Jones identifies Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia as potentially problematic despite admitting she’s read neither work. Lacey, meanwhile, put together a comprehensive report on fan writer Paul Weimer that included Weimer’s travel to Tibet as a possible embarrassment to the Chinese government - Weimer had actually traveled to Nepal.

McCarty, meanwhile, has locked down his Facebook profile since offering a weak mea culpa. An interview he gave to Chris Barkley in early February provides more insight. Not into what rules, laws, or social prohibitions were broken by Babel or Paul Weimer that led to their removal but into the shaky moral framework McCarty’s built to justify his actions to himself, if no one else. It’s more difficult to read than Barkley and Sanford’s reporting - at times McCarty is almost incoherent - but the gist is that McCarty still refuses to explain why eligible works and writers were removed from consideration, stands by his decisions, and possibly suffers from the opposite of Imposter Syndrome.

Perhaps it’s the Peter Principle in effect, and McCarty was elevated past the point of his competence. Either way, his future involvement with the Hugo Awards is unlikely. Kat Jones, who had been announced as the Administrator for the 2024 Glasgow Hugo Awards, resigned yesterday under intense public pressure. Glasgow 2024 Worldcon chair Esther MacCallum-Stewart announced a number of changes designed to offer more transparency into the selection process.

While we don’t know if unofficial political or financial pressure was put on McCarty to censor works potentially offensive to the Chinese government, it’s obvious he chose to do so, and still believes it was the right choice. Jones and Lacey expressed concern over their research, but still provided McCarty with the background information he requested. Remember that, according to their statements and email history, this was done without the involvement of their Chinese counterparts. Despite our shared belief in the freedom of expression, Americans and Canadians decided to censor works on behalf of the Chinese government. McCarty hinted he did so out of concern for their Chinese members, but admits he has no idea if any of the ineligible material would actually be cause for concern. If anything, this debacle and the spotlight it put on what was otherwise a prestigious but inconsequential award ceremony had the opposite effect. Were his actions out of legitimate concern for Chinese citizens, McCarty could fall on his sword and claim the tabulation and inadmissibility errors were his fault. The story would last a few days. Instead it’s a month-long international controversy. If McCarty’s previous statements and interview prove anything, it’s that he’s convinced of his own importance and infallibility.

Dave McCarty isn’t unusual. Western movie and music studios, organizations, and governments have grown comfortable with self-censorship. We’ll put up with a lot if it means access to China’s massive economy. But it’s a reminder how easily we can convince ourselves we’re doing the right thing. Diane Lacey’s concerns and eventual whistleblowing didn’t stop her from compiling a political dossier on Paul Weimer. By her Twitter account, Kat Jones considers herself a proper progressive, but she still investigated Chinese-American immigrants and raised concerns about their work despite admitting she never read it. When confronted with her own words, she showed as much concern for the breach of confidentiality as for the consequences of her reporting. Speculative fiction is all about expressing new concepts or seeing old ones from a new perspective. Not perfectly; it’s also a field rife with conservative and libertarian reactionaries. That doesn’t mean we should do the repressive Chinese, Ugandan, or Floridian government’s work and delegitimize queer or politically inconvenient voices for them.