2023 Hugos

The 2023 Hugo Awards, for works disseminated in 2022, were presented at Chengdu Worldcon on Sunday October 21 and caused an unprecedented controversy when the voting details were released three months later, revealing the administrators' malfeasance.

The concom's Hugo Awards Subcommittee, also called "Hugo Awards Selection Executive Department" of the WSFS Division, were Dave McCarty (Administrator or Co-Head; also one of the con's 11 Vice Chairs), Ben Yalow, Chen Shi (both Co-Heads of the WSFS Division and two of the three con Co-Chairs), Ann Marie Rudolph, Diane Lacey, Jiang Zhenyu, Joe Yao, Tina Wang, Guo Dongsheng, Pang Bo.

The nominations opened on March 1 and ran until April 30. As reported by the con, 1,847 valid nominating ballots (1843 electronic and 4 paper) were received and counted from members of Chengdu and Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon. To sort fiction in Chinese to length categories, the conversion factor of 1.6 Chinese characters to an English word was used, also adopted by Glasgow 2024 for 2024 Hugos after "spot checks".

The finalists were announced on July, 7. The final voting ran from July, 10 until October, 1. There were 1,674 valid Finalist ballots reported, the lowest number in the past decade, over 500 fewer than in 2022 Hugos.

Much ado followed, especially at and around the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting.

Controversy

Both nominations and final voting were delayed from the usual timeline and the convention's earlier promises.

On 9 July, just after the finalists were published, S. B. Divya announced that “a few weeks ago” she was informed of Best Novelette Hugo nomination for “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold”. As a signatory of the 2022 call for the boycott of the Chengdu Worldcon due to PRC's persecution of Uyghurs, she had withdrawn the nomination, and her name from Escape Pod's Best Semiprozine Hugo nomination.

After the nomination details were released in January 2024, further withdrawals were found, not made public at the time: Becky Chambers (A Prayer for the Crown-Shy) from Best Novella; US Predator film Prey from Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form; and Guo Jian (郭建) from Best Professional Artist.

Chengdu's belated and final Progress Report 2 of July, 17 said (p. 5):

Eligible members vote according to the “one person, one vote” rule to select Hugo Award works and individuals that comply with local laws and regulations. The Chengdu organizing committee will review the nominated works and validate the votes.

The "local laws" part caused some comments at the time but was largely forgotten and found significant only in the hindsight.

While it is usual to release the Finalist voting numbers immediately after the ceremony, Chengdu did so over six weeks later on December 3, 2023.

The details of the nominating ballots and EPH tables were released only on Saturday, January 20, 2024, the last possible date per WSFS Constitution, and immediately All Fandom Was Plunged Into War since a number of nominees had been declared ineligible with no explanation, and there were various irregularities in the numbers.

Mike Glyer at File 770 asked Dave McCarty about the “not eligible” rulings. His only reply was

After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.

Commenters speculated that “the rules we must follow” refers to Chinese governmental oversight. The expression became an instant catchphrase. McCarty on his Facebook profile (which had for several months served as the only information channel about the Hugo-related developments, or lack thereof) denied that anyone on his team acted under government orders, but refused to explain any further, repeating the one officious sentence and attacking his interlocutors.

The same File 770 article quoted Kevin Standlee's post "Elections Have Consequences" saying that the site voters "accepted that the convention would be held under Chinese legal conditions" and hypothesising that Worldcon/Hugos in more places would be similarly affected, namely in Florida by "Don't Say Gay or Trans" laws. In the following days, Standlee joined discussions on the kerfuffle with his inimitable zeal.

Ineligibles

The most notable were:

• Babel by R. F. Kuang for the Best Novel Hugo (published in China by the state CITIC Press in October 2023)
• Paul Weimer for the Best Fan Writer Hugo
• Xiran Jay Zhao for the Astounding Award (second year of eligibility, finalist in 2022)
• the episode “The Sound of Her Wings” from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman TV series for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
• several works in Chinese (to be added!)

Several further disqualifications were explained by reference to relevant provisions of the WSFS Constitution.

Aftermath

On Tuesday, January 30, 2024, Worldcon Intellectual Property issued an announcement that it “censured” Chen Shi and Ben Yalow (each) "for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over", Dave McCarty for ditto plus "his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks", and “reprimanded” (this was explained as a “lesser penalty” by Donald Eastlake) Kevin Standlee "for public comments that mistakenly led people to believe that we are not servicing our marks."

The same announcement said McCarty resigned from the Board of Directors and Standlee as Board of Directors chairman. (Donald Eastlake, previous Vice-chair, was elected the new Chair of the BoD. Per a follow-up announcement at File 770 only, the WSFS Mark Protection Committee appointed Bruce Farr, previously non-voting Treasurer, to the seat emptied by McCarty, up for re-election at the 2024 Business Meeting.)

On January 30, the Seattle 2025 Worldcon responded to an earlier question that its “team has decided that no member of the 2023 Chengdu Hugo team will be part of our WSFS Division or Hugo team”.

On Sunday, February 4, at Capricon 44, McCarty gave a 42-minute interview to Chris Barkley, whose 2023 Best Fan Writer Hugo win may have been affected by the exclusions. It was published on the same evening as a recording and a day later as a transcript. While providing some vague explanations including an "SQL error," it just poured oil into the fire.

On the same occasion, Barkley was contacted by Diane Lacey and provided with several of Hugo Subcommitee's internal e-mails from early June and its eligibility spreadsheet. He and Jason Sanford published these in an investigative report on Wednesday, February 14. The e-mails made clear that (over a month after the nomination ballots were collected; the time reportedly spent by "canonicalisation", i. e. unifying various possible spelling etc. variants used for the same nominee by different voters) McCarty asked other North American fans to “highlight anything of a sensitive political nature” from the Chinese viewpoint and they eagerly complied, based either on the works' contents (often guessed second-hand) or authors' expressions on social media etc. (often misunderstanding facts). It remains contented whether or how much the Chengdu part of the concom called for such a process, or at least were informed about it after the fact. The e-mails also mention only the Novel, Fan Writer and Astounding categories, so other questions, especially re the Dramatic Presentation above, stay open.

While Lacey expressed remorse and apologised for her involvement, Kat Jones, who also took part in this vetting, published an unrepentant response.

On Thursday, February 15 the 2024 Worldcon announced that Jones resigned as its Hugo Administrator “and has been removed from the Glasgow 2024 team across all mediums”, reiterating its previous commitment to transparency of the Hugo process.

Winners' response

On Saturday, February 17 Samantha Mills renounced her Best Short Story Hugo, noting

at the validation list itself, aka the tables of frontrunner nominees being vetted for the final ballot […] were a whole lot of Chinese nominees in frontrunner positions who just… vanished, and never made it onto the final ballot. […] not a single fiction winner (short story, novelette, novella, novel, or series) would have even been a finalist if those nominees hadn’t been taken off.

Mills also said that while she had accepted the nomination, "due to concerns about the Worldcon event itself, I elected not to participate in programming or accept a free trip to Chengdu. […] I said in my previous long-winded post on the subject, I have nothing against the fandoms at play. But I wasn’t comfortable being one of the faces of local PR under political circumstances".

On Wednesday, February 21 Adrian Tchaikovsky renounced his Best Series Hugo, noting "mass disenfranchisement of Chinese voters".

On the other hand, the Hugo Girl Podcast after their Hugo win recused from further nominations. On March 10, they withdrew the recusal effective in 2025.

Links

• Nominations announcement video (July 7, 2023).
• Chengdu Worldcon website.
• 2023 Hugo Award winners at the WSFS Hugo website.
• 2023 Hugo Awards at ISFDB, with detailed listing of all nominees including those "under cutoff"
• “Panic! At The Hugos” by Aidan Moher, Astrolabe 36, January 20, 2024.
• “2023 Hugo Nomination Report Has Unexplained Ineligibility Rulings; Also Reveals Who Declined” by Mike Glyer, File 770, January 20, 2024.
• “The 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics Have Finally Been Released – And We Have Questions” by Cora Buhlert, January 21, 2024, with overview of responses.
• Hugo 2023 category at Camestros Felapton, with various analyses of the numbers and discrepancies.
• Reporting in mundane media:
  • The Guardian, Wednesday January 24, 2024.
  • Publishers Weekly, Thurdday February 1, 2024.
  • Esquire, Friday February 2, 2024.
• Public apology by Diane Lacey (on Facebook, a copy of her letter that was published in the Report and separately at File 770).
• The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion by Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford. See also copy at File 770, with hundreds of comments.

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