Leaked emails show organizers of the prestigious Hugo Awards vetted writers’ work and comments with regard to China, where last year’s awards were held.

Leaked emails show organizers of the prestigious Hugo Awards vetted writers’ work and comments with regard to China, where last year’s awards were held.

Organizers of the Hugo Awards, one of the most prominent literary awards in science fiction, excluded multiple authors from shortlists last year over concerns their work or public comments could be offensive to China, leaked emails show.

Questions had been raised as to why writers including Neil Gaiman, R.F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer had been deemed ineligible as finalists despite earning enough votes according to information published last month by awards organizers. Emails released this week revealed that they were concerned about how some authors might be perceived in China, where the Hugo Awards were held last year for the first time.

  • @Thrashy
    2•10 months ago

    Ah, my bad… There’s a core of people attached to Worldcon Intellectual Property who are supposed to support the hosting convention’s committee. This included Dave McCarty (who was removed from his position within WIP back in January as this situation evolved), and it seems like he pulled together a support team of experienced hands when it became clear that the Chengdu committee had not realized the extent of their responsibilities and couldn’t assemble a local Hugo committee capable of handling everything in the time available. So while it would be convenient to say “hey, the local committee is ultimately responsible for the way the Hugoa are run!” that’s only sort of true at the best-run of cons, and certainly not true in the case of Chengdu.

    People who’ve been doing this for a long time and should have known better ran scared from the Chinese government’s censorship bureaucracy, for shortsighted and poorly justified reasons. The good news, such as it is, is that as that has been revealed the folks responsible have been removed from their positions, but it’s still disappointing to find out about. I worked with Dave McCarty in the runup to a previous Worldcon and I would have expected better of him.