The finalists for the 2024 Hugo Awards were announced on Friday, and as is typical for the Hugos, the ballot has a mixture of the familiar and the fresh.
Established Hugo favourites such as John Scalzi (Starter Villain), Ann Leckie (Translation State), Martha Wells (Witch King), Nghi Vo (Mammoths at the Gates, On the Fox Roads) and Naomi Kritzer (“The Year Without Sunshine,” “Better Living Through Algorithms”) are all present. Alongside them are newcomers including Vajra Chandrasekera (The Saint of Bright Doors) and Rachael K. Jones (“The Sound of Children Screaming”). There is even a whole new category: Best Game or Interactive Work.
Also featured is a selection of finalists from China. This is significant, as the Hugo Awards—although presented at the World Science Fiction Convention—have typically been heavily America-centric. The Chinese stories featured on the ballot are He Xi’s “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet”; Wang Jinkang’s “Seeds of Mercury”; Gu Shi’s “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition”; Han Song’s “Answerless Journey” and Baoshu’s “Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times”. Chinese talent is also represented in the Related Work, Graphic Story, Editor, Fancast and Dramatic Presentation categories.
The Chinese presence on the 2024 ballot came about because, each year, the Hugo nominations are open to members of the previous year’s Worldcon; and the 2023 Worldcon was held in Chengdu, marking the first and only time that the convention was hosted in China.
In mentioning last year’s Worldcon, we must acknowledge the dark cloud hovering over the proceedings. The 2023 Hugos were the scene of a disaster, one so severe that two of the year’s winners—Samantha Mills and Adrian Tchaikovsky—opted to disown their awards.
Just what happened, and how can it be prevented from happening again?
Recap: What Happened in 2023
There have been substantial developments since WWAC last reported on the controversy surrounding the 2023 Hugo Awards in early February. Back then, it was known that a number of contenders (R. F. Kuang’s novel Babel; Hai Ya’s short story “Pagoda of Fogong Temple”; an episode of The Sandman; fan writer Paul Weimer; and novelist Xiran Jay Zhao) were deemed ineligible for reasons that had not been made public.
Suspicion quickly fell upon Hugo Award administrator Dave McCarty, who provided a series of evasive responses to questions about the unexplained disqualifications, and who was subsequently censured in an official statement from Worldcon Intellectual Property—a statement that still failed to explain exactly what had gone wrong.
Later on, in mid-February, Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford (both of whom were contenders for the 2023 Best Fan Writer Hugo, with Barkley winning) assembled a detailed report on the censorship and exclusion that took place at the awards. They did so with the aid of Diane Lacey, who was among the Hugo administration team in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2023.
Lacey provided Barkley and Sanford with emails shared among the Hugo team, which did much to expose what had occurred behind closed doors.
In an email sent on 5 June 2023, Dave McCarty called for potential finalists to be examined for “anything of a sensitive political nature” before they could be deemed “safe to put… on the ballot”:
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, [sic] or other topics that may be an issue *in* China…that needs to be highlighted so we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot of [sic] if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it.
Kat Jones, who served as an administrator for the 2022 but not 2023 Hugo Awards, was involved in the exchange. The day after McCarty sent the above email, Jones obliged by flagging potential issues with the creators and works chosen by voters.
R. F. Kuang’s Babel, wrote Jones, “has a lot about China,” but since she had not read the novel she was unable to say “whether it would be viewed as ‘negatives of China.'” Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau was also listed by Jones on account of its “talk about importing hacienda workers from China.” As the book made the final ballot, this obviously did not harm its eligibility.
In an email sent on 7 June, Kat Jones listed what she considered to be “Fan Writer potential issues”. For one contender in the category, Jason Sanford, the potential issues ranged from coverage of the specific controversies relating to the Chengdu Worldcon on his social media, through to “Mention of a writer based in Taiwan” on his Patreon blog. Another fan writer, Alex Brown, had potential issues that included having “Agreed with Jeannette Ng’s comments on Hong Kong.” Writer Alasdair Stuart, said Jones, “Wants to go to a Batman hotel in Taiwan, but I think it’s more about Batman than Taiwan.”
In the case of Paul Weimer, who was ultimately declared ineligible without explanation, the potential issues started with the assertion that he “Traveled to Tibet and tweeted pictures and talked about food” and included, among other things, specific criticism of the Chinese Communist Party. On his Patreon, Weimer responded by pointing out that he had actually visited Nepal, not Tibet.
Chris Barkley, Bitter Karella and Camestros Felapton also had potential issues. The only Best Fan Writer contender given a clean bill of health was Örjan Westin, the poster behind MicroSFF: “Didn’t find anything problematic! Not very easily or reliably Google-able though.”
Also on June 7, Diane Lacey herself flagged up potential issues among the Astounding Award for Best New Writer contenders:
Astounding award possible issues:
Xiran Jay Zhou [sic]: The Iron Giant is described as a reimagining of the rise of the Chinese Empress Wu Zetian. Including it because I don’t know if that would be a negative in China. Zhoa [sic] is also active on social media, described on Wikipedia as an “internet personality”.
Naseem Jamnia – Author openly describes themselves as queer, nonbinary, trans, (And again, good for them), and frequently writes about gender, particularly non-binary. The cited work also relies on these themes. I include them because I don’t know how that will play in China. (I suspect less than well.)
Sue Lynn Tan – Again, Daughter of the Moon Goddess, is inspired by Chinese mythology. No idea if it might be viewed as a negative in China.
All of this was carried out to avoid censure from Chinese bodies — but did such a threat even exist?
Evidence is scanty. In their analysis, Sanford and Barkley point to a post reportedly from the Propaganda Department of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China that made the following claim:
Three special groups reviewed the content of 1,512 works in five categories, including cultural and creative, literary, and artistic, that were shortlisted in the preliminary examination of the Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention, conducting strict checks on works suspected of being related to politics and ethnicity and religion, and putting forward proposals for the disposal of 12 controversial works related to LGBT issues.
The two writers acknowledge that the post has been deleted and so cannot be verified, although they note that it “does tie in with language” used by the Chengdu Worldcon in at least one official publication.
Their report also provides quotations from Lacey and McCarty on the topic. Lacey expressed personal uncertainty as to whether the removal of eligible works resulted from “local pressure from the government or… business interests” and offered a tentative conclusion: “From my knowledge, I would probably say business interests.” McCarty, meanwhile, stated that the Chinese authorities were involved “only insofar as the government says what the laws are in the country. … So the government of China says what’s cool in China and the people just operate inside of the bounds of what’s cool”.
Government pressure? Big business throwing its weight around? Self-censorship? Not all questions about the 2023 Hugos have been answered, and the only thing certain is that the results of the award were seriously compromised.
Removal of Chinese Works
As noted, this year’s Hugo ballot has a number of Chinese works as members of last year’s Chengdu Worldcon were able to place nomination votes. What is remarkable about this is that the 2024 Hugos actually have more Chinese contenders than the Hugos that were held in China.
This is unsurprising, albeit disturbing, when we consider that the corruption at the 2023 Hugo Awards involved the administration removing Chinese voting ballots en masse—this time for reasons that appear to have had nothing to do with fear of state censorship.
In a statement of apology for her involvement with the Hugo affair, Diane Lacey admits that she and her colleagues discarded ballots that they had suspected of following a voting slate:
It happened gradually. We vetted entries, as always, checking length, publication dates, etc. Then things began being removed from the vetting lists. We were told there was collusion in a Chinese publication that had published a nominations list, a slate as it were, and so those ballots were identified and eliminated, exactly as many have speculated. This certainly accounted for some of the disappearances. These were all Chinese language publications so I don’t know who the authors might have been. I was never privy to the actual nomination numbers.
The exact provenance of this supposed slate remains something of a mystery. It is true that a recommendation list posted on the Chinese social network Weixin appears to have had some influence on the ballot; this is a matter covered in WWAC’s own report on the 2023 Hugos.
But recommendation lists of one sort or another are commonplace at the Hugos. Yilin Wang translated a blog post from Science Fiction World, the Chinese publication which assembled the list in question, and demonstrated that it was simply a means of signal-boosting Chinese-language work that otherwise risked being overlooked by the Hugo Awards. This is hardly nefarious.
The vague report of a “slate” does not necessarily refer to the Science Fiction World list. This point was made by Camestros Felapton when responding to speculation that somebody involved with the Hugo administration dealt with the perceived slate by moving vote totals from Chinese-language works to English-language works, a theory that Felapton himself doubts. While Lacey’s leaked documents do much to shed light on the 2023 Hugos, we evidently have some lingering mysteries.
Furthermore, the revelation that Dave McCarty’s administration team was involved in removing supposed slate-voting ballots from the Hugos in 2023 raises a question about the award’s history. McCarty was also a member of the Hugo administration in 2015 and 2016, years in which the Rabid Puppies slate-voting campaign set up by far-right author Vox Day swept the Hugo ballots. Writers who benefitted from the Rabid Puppies slate include Jeffro Johnson, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who would later declare that the SF/F field had been manipulated by “a cabal of Jews, communists, homosexuals, and pedophiles.”
The events of 2023 indicate that McCarty felt he had the right to discard ballots that he suspected of following a slate. Why, then, did he fail to prevent Vox Day’s open and unambiguous slate-voting campaign? Why were Chinese authors removed from the 2023 ballot, but the rantings of Jeffro Johnson and his ilk allowed to stay in past years?
These, alas, are more questions that remain unanswered.
2024 and Beyond
The corruption at the 2023 Worldcon has undeniably damaged the reputation of the Hugo Awards, but there is plenty of room for the 2024 Worldcon—which will be held in Glasgow during August—to make up for things.
The 2024 Hugos are being handled by a different team of administrators to those of 2023, one free from the taint of McCarty’s group. One of the admins, Nicholas Whyte, has already written at length about his commitment to a clean and open voting process.
The Hugos are known for providing considerable transparency by the standards of a literary award, with detailed nomination and voting breakdowns published after each Worldcon. This is precisely how the corruption behind the 2023 Hugos was exposed: the statistical documents contained too many oddities.
Already, the 2024 Hugos have taken a step towards still-greater transparency. Unusually, the press release announcing the finalists also lists the would-be nominees that were deemed ineligible, along with the exact reasons (either a declined nomination, being released outside the year of eligibility, or failing to meet category criteria). This information is generally not made public until after the Hugos are presented.
Meanwhile, regular Hugo Award for Best Fanzine finalist Journey Planet has announced a “Be the Change” issue, one dedicated to “focusing on the future of the Hugo awards, looking at realistic and achievable solutions to prevent a recurrence of what occurred in 2023.” The fanzine is presently running an open call for article submissions.
The Hugos Awards are an SF/F institution—and being an institution is only so far removed from being a creaky relic. But it has to be said that the awards, in the wake of a disastrous year, have taken solid steps in reforming themselves. And the 2024 ballot, with its mixture of Chinese and English-language work, may well be closer to a true Worldcon award than any past iteration of the Hugos.
