The Hugo Awards, the science fiction genre's oldest and most prestigious awards, are no stranger to controversy; most notably the Sad Puppies affair in 2015. Now, the publication of the detailed voting statistics from the 2022 Chengdu Worldcon has started another one.
The voting statistics showed that several nominees were disqualified with no reasons given other than a statement that they had violated the Hugo's voting rules. One of the disqualifications was for Babel, by R. F. Kuang, a book that won last year's Nebula and Locus awards.
John Scalzi has a summary of the events on his Whatever blog in which he links to this longer post by Cora Buhlert.
This is the most unusual Hugo longlist I’ve ever seen, including the puppy years, and we really, really need some answers here:
Why were Babel, Paul Weimer, Xiran Jay Zhao and that Sandman episode declared ineligible, when they absolutely should have been eligible? Most of the Chinese nominees declared ineligible likely actually were ineligible due to prior publication, at least according to Neil Clarke who recognised several of the titles and authors. Though “Fogong Temple Pagoda” appears to be a 2022 publication, i.e. eligible. We definitely need answers here.
And what’s the reason behind the very strange voting patterns and sharp drop-off between first and fifteenth place nominations? Normally, this sort of pattern indicates slating, but a) EPH was supposed to reduce the impact of slates, and b) we have seen no public evidence of slates apart from a recommendation list (which is not against the rules) by Science Fiction World. And the Science Fiction World list alone does not explain these patterns.
Finally, while occasionally a nominee will fall victim to EPH*, we have had several nominees knocked out by EPH, which is extremely unusual. That said, this might be explained by the very different voting patterns of Chinese and Western fans.
*EPH is the rather complex voting scheme designed to stop the kind of ballot manipulation used by the Sad Puppies back in 2015.
Most recently, the Hugo administrator for Chengdu fielded questions on Facebook. File 770 has a summary.
I do hope more details will be forthcoming. I think the fan community and the nominees are owed an explanation.
Update: The story is now hitting the mainstream press. The Guardian, a British newspaper, has an article about it today. Neil Gaiman is quoted. An episode of the series based on his Sandman graphic novels was ruled ineligible.
Writing on Facebook, Gaiman said: “Until now, one of the things that’s always been refreshing about the Hugos has been the transparency and clarity of the process … This is obfuscatory, and without some clarity it means that whatever has gone wrong here is unfixable, or may be unfixable in ways that don’t damage the respect the Hugos have earned over the last 70 years.”
Update 2: On his blog, SF author Charles Stross has published an overview of the Hugo controversy. It's a good one to read if you aren't familiar with how the Hugo Awards and the World Science Fiction Conventions are organized.
My understanding is that a bunch of Chinese fans who ran a successful regional convention in Chengdu (population 21 million; slightly more than the New York metropolitan area, about 30% more than London and suburbs) heard about the worldcon and thought "wouldn't it be great if we could call ourselves the world science fiction convention?"
They put together a bid, then got a bunch of their regulars to cough up $50 each to buy a supporting membership in the 2021 worldcon and vote in site selection. It doesn't take that many people to "buy" a worldcon—I seem to recall it's on the order of 500-700 votes—so they bought themselves the right to run the worldcon in 2023. And that's when the fun and games started.
And from author and journalist Andrew Liptak, we have another overview with some suggestions on how to move forward.
A big part of this problem comes from the structural nature of the World Science Fiction Society, and how it's not an organization that directly oversees conventions or awards, but handles the administrative elements. Transforming this organization (or phasing it out and replacing it with a successor) into one that has more control over its programming strikes me as a way to remove some of the uncertainty and bring about a more professional approach to the planning and administration of the awards, one that would prevent folks from gaming or meddling with the awards, and restore some element of trust into them by actually being able to enforce its rules and constitutions with its conventions. It needs administrators that do more than throw up their hands and give non-statements to a frustrated group of people.
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