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The Hugo Awards Step In It Again

By Nate Parker | Books | January 23, 2024 |

By Nate Parker | Books | January 23, 2024 |


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If any organization has a harder time dealing with controversy than the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, it’s the World Science Fiction Society. The difference is that while the Golden Globes don’t matter, the Hugo Awards absolutely do. Publishers are much more welcoming to Hugo-winning authors, and having the award emblem blazoned across a book’s cover still guarantees sales. But too often since the 2015 “Sad\Rabid Puppies” campaigns, the Hugo Awards have been mired down in controversy. In 2021, for example, the DisCon III convention in Washington, D.C., was tainted in many eyes by the inclusion of defense contractor Raytheon as a sponsor and participant in convention activities. Over the years a number of changes were made to the nomination process and WSFS Constitution to embrace inclusivity and avoid these issues in the future.

However, a late release of last year’s nomination statistics suggests they failed. Works published in 2022 were available for award in 2023. Works like Rebecca F. Kuang’s Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence, a speculative fiction novel about British Imperialism and capitalism in a world where industrial power is based on the linguistic differences between similar words in different languages, power that’s stored in silver bars. It’s an immensely popular novel that debuted at the top of the NYT Best Seller list and won the 2022 Nebula Award for Best Novel and Best Fantasy Novel for the 2023 Locus Awards. Its popularity went well beyond genre fans, and its absence among Hugo nominees baffled writers, critics, and fans. The released stats raise even more questions; Babel received the third most nominations in the Best Novel category, but was knocked out by the E Pluribus Hugo (EPH) elimination system, which removes the least-popular entry in each round of voting. Babel’s numbers never changed as its competitors were removed, despite several voters who have come forward and stated that it was included among their nominations.

Babel is far from the only oddity. Popular fan writer Paul Weimar also received the third-most nominations in the Best Fan Writer category, only to be inexplicably deemed ineligible. Canadian-Chinese author Xiran Jay Zhao experienced similar treatment when nominated for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. None of these writers were ever contacted with questions about their eligibility status, nor were they told why they were left off the ballot.

In perhaps the most confounding exclusion from a pop culture standpoint, Netflix’s The Sandman was completely shut out. The series as a whole was said to be ineligible because several of its episodes received more votes in the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) than the series did as a whole in the Long Form category. Fair enough. Why, then, was episode 6, “The Sound of Her Wings,” left off the list? What made it ineligible? It’s a question 2023 Hugo administrator Dave McCarty has been asked many times now, and his responses are… unsatisfactory.

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If you look through McCarty’s thread - and you should, because it’s fun to watch him get wrecked in real time - you’ll see Gaiman’s about the only one who gets a polite answer. “After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.”

He repeats the same answer ad nauseum despite multiple polite requests for clarity. It’s a vague answer for an organization that prides itself on inclusivity and transparency. Spec fiction writers and fans being what they are, speculation abounds about why these works were ineligible. Most theories revolve around the small detail that last year’s Con was held in Chengdu, China. China’s ruling party isn’t fond of fiction that they believe casts China in a bad light, messes with traditional religious themes, or includes positive LGBTQ+ plots, so it’s possible that the Hugo’s panel or administrator Dave McCarty bowed to political pressure or took it upon themselves to self-censor this year’s contestants. Comments made by McCarty where he’s careful to say there was no “official” communication with the Chinese government aren’t helping defuse the situation. And writers are justifiably upset.

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It’s fascinating how many layers there are to this. There are the writers whose work was inexplicably removed from the competition without notice. Authors who won are questioning what winning a rigged contest says about the quality of their writing. Everyone’s wondering what this means for future Worldcons if holding the convention in a non-Western country or a grossly anti-LGBTQ+ state like Florida means nominated works will be excluded without notice or appeal. Fair questions are being raised about Kampcon’s push to hold the 2028 Convention in Uganda, a country whose anti-homosexual bias makes Florida look like Provinceton. Kampcon’s excellent Code of Conduct aside, there’s a real threat of censorship and violence towards writers and fans should they attend.

It’s a mess, and Dave McCarty isn’t doing the committee any favors by insulting fans and writers rather than offering frank answers. The Chengdu Worldcon and its results have damaged the Hugo Awards in a way the Sad Puppies campaign never accomplished, which is saying something. Whether they can recover or are fated for irrelevancy remains to be seen. For more information, see John Scalzi’s blog.