Hugo Nominations & Awards: 2021 and Onward

[Ran]

I think from reactions people are just taking it that the Westerners made these decisions, but the opening e-mail from McCarty seems to make it pretty plain that he was taking directives from his "Chinese counterparts", and the reason they were being left off the e-mails was to insulate said Chinese counterparts from any blowback from the government and vested business interests if the Hugo Award administrators failed to be sufficiently censorious for their tastes.

What a mess. I'm also rather confused as to why slate ballots were being invalidated. The whole point of EPH was that slates were to have a lot less power, so it was fine if people slated works. I suppose it may have been just that in this case the slates were the overwhelming majority and would have swamped EPH (which is really designed to prevent a minority of ballots from having an outsized impact due to an organized slates).

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Anyone know if Kat Jones is going to withdraw as an administrator for the Glasgow Worldcon given the revelations about her involvement with the “self-censorship” of the Chengdu Hugos?

[Ran]

You know as much as anyone else does.

I expect she ultimately will, or will be fired.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

14 minutes ago, Ran said:

You know as much as anyone else does.

I expect she ultimately will, or will be fired.

I hate that it has come to this…

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

We have an answer.  She has resigned.

https://glasgow2024.org/chairs-statement-15th-february-2024/?fbclid=IwAR104xfHjmI1hVlxCEAPRRZsJt2axGPvTToFrBmjae5Ocyc2VqP17lS8tDI_aem_AQH9QXPYiuabhWzFXIDzzofzaMJ8ptLDgrH-EdKVBwkinEXhKhKeM2Kr_Nn0zbyqYw4

[Zorral]

Considering everything in the File770 report, and the brief commentary by Scalzi, my big question is is, Why?  Why did they do this?  What did they think They would get out of it, including chosing to take off works like Babel they hadn't even read?

https://whatever.scalzi.com/

Quote

... The short version is that eligible people and works were kept off the Hugo ballot, not because the Chinese government or the Chinese principals of the Chengdu Worldcon overtly demanded it, but because American and Canadian Hugo administrators made the censorship decisions themselves, often on grounds that were (to put it politely) misinformed. People and works who should have been finalists were denied their rightful place on the ballot. A fraud was perpetrated by the Hugo administrators: on the Hugo Award voters, on the Chengdu Worldcon membership, and on the science fiction and fantasy community at large. ....

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Considering everything in the File770 report, and the brief commentary by Scalzi, my big question is is, Why?  Why did they do this?  What did they think They would get out of it, including chosing to take off works like Babel they hadn't even read?

https://whatever.scalzi.com/

 

I agree with Scalzi.  If the administrators think censorship is incoming… don’t cover for it… make the State censor and resign in protest.

Edited February 15 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Ran]

I still disagree that the Chinese principals weren't involved. It's one of the very first things McCarty says in the e-mails, that his understanding of finding things having to do with Tibet, Hong Kong, China, etc. was drawn from his Chinese counterparts, and he said he'd get more guidance from them. I find it improbable, at best, that the Chinese Hugo Award Administrators were not in the loop. They weren't on any written communications, at least not that we've seen (we have only seen communications Lacey was privy too, who knows how McCarty back-channeled with them), but I fully expect that they preferred to steer away from written communication precisely to avoid a paper trail to minimize their personal provable involvement in these decisions.

I guess it's admirable that the Westerners are falling on their swords so as not to embarrass the Chinese concom and possibly get them in trouble with their government or the CCP, but I think people are being very simplistic in their reading of what we've learned. Yes, none of these people should have continued in the task and should have insisted that the Chinese administrators run everything. Better a complete failure to run the awards than to participate in this deeply tainted award season.

Edited February 15 by Ran

[mormont]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

I guess it's admirable that the Westerners are falling on their swords so as not to embarrass the Chinese concom and possibly get them in trouble with their government or the CCP

I don't think it's that admirable given that the Westerners in question were in a position that was absolutely untenable regardless.

I'm also struck, reading the emails, just how markedly casual McCarty's tone is about the censorship issue. He genuinely doesn't show any signs that he thinks this is a big deal: he talks like it's just an unpleasant local custom we have to observe for form's sake.

And he's asking his team to do this work based on a short, vague list of topics. They're floundering as a result. The most common refrain is 'I have no idea if this is an issue but I'm flagging it just in case'. It honestly looks more like that list was based on a conversation with a local fan than any official guidance. Which makes the 'laws we must follow' defence collapse like wet cardboard. This was likely done on hearsay, not legal strictures. It seems credible to me that the CCP never actually said a word to the concom, and that this was actually anticipatory, the concom following 'rules' they were in fact just imagining.

[Ran]

The willingness to just suppose the Chinse concom were helpless innocents who left everything to McCarty and co. strikes me as infantilizing and deeming, personally, so I can't indulge in it. I'll take McCarty at his word that his Chinese counterparts (who are certainly also "local fans") were giving him some sort of guidance, but it seems obvious they weren't looped in to these e-mails to distance them from any paper trail.

The fact that there was a post from the Sichuan propaganda committee indicating they reviewed the works of shortlisted creators and claimed to have directly seen to the removal of a dozen works with LGBTQ themes seems to strike very strongly against the idea that there was no role of the government in all of this.

 

Edited February 15 by Ran

[Derfel Cadarn]

The resignations are good. Had anyone involved in the 2023 debacle carried over to 2024, that year’s Hugos would be tainted, and suspicion would linger over it

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

The willingness to just suppose the Chinse concom were helpless innocents who left everything to McCarty and co. strikes me as infantilizing and deeming, personally, so I can't indulge in it. I'll take McCarty at his word that his Chinese counterparts (who are certainly also "local fans") were giving him some sort of guidance, but it seems obvious they weren't looped in to these e-mails to distance them from any paper trail.

OK, but nothing I said disagrees with any of that? I know nothing about the role of the Chinese concom (none of us do). So I’ve not made any comment about their role. They may well have been the source of this impossibly vague ‘guidance’. They possibly made the final call on eligibility, even. Then again maybe not. All we can say is, those emails are incredibly casual about the whole affair. 

The notion that McCarty was trying to nobly protect them isn’t supported by anything we know either. Yes, it’s reasonable to suppose they were left out of the emails to avoid a paper trail. It’s also reasonable to ask whether McCarty was asked to do that or whether he, in fact, was the one infantilising and making assumptions about whether they needed to be protected. We’ll likely never know.

But we can certainly know that whatever the situation was, McCarty made a bad choice that he then executed badly. On the evidence of these emails, he did not seem unduly bothered about it, roped in volunteers to help without briefing them properly about what they were actually doing, stalled on releasing the evidence he must have known would reveal the mess and then was an asshole to people who asked him what were reasonable questions. 

1 hour ago, Ran said:

The fact that there was a post from the Sichuan propaganda committee indicating they reviewed the works of shortlisted creators and claimed to have directly seen to the removal of a dozen works with LGBTQ themes seems to strike very strongly against the idea that there was no role of the government in all of this.

That post, I understand, was quickly deleted. We can only speculate whether it was the truth. As things stand, we do not have any evidence that a dozen works with LGBTQ themes were in fact removed. 

Edited February 15 by mormont

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, mormont said:

? I know nothing about the role of the Chinese concom (none of us do).

From one of the first quoted McCarty emails:

 

Quote

"I will try to get better guidance when I have a chance to dig into this deeper with the Chinese folks on the committee."

  

3 minutes ago, mormont said:

The notion that McCarty was trying to nobly protect them isn’t supported by anything we know either.

Per Lacey,

Quote

Dave insisted that there needed to be more time elapsed before the Chinese nationals would be safe from the ensuing uproar, and he made it clear from the time the finalist names were released that he intended to wait the entire 90 days.

He knew he was screwed regardless, and acting out of the ordinary was doing him no personal favors, so I would take Lacey's report to be an accurate representation of McCarty's actions in relation to the release, which shows he was in fact concerned for the Chinese members of the committee.

Edited February 15 by Ran

[mormont]

Yes?

ETA - I mean, that’s a passing remark that tells us nothing of any substance without us drawing inferences about what it might indicate about their role. Informal advice? Formal vetting authority?

Certainly, there’s currently no evidence any further ‘guidance’ ever materialised. 

Edited February 15 by mormont

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, mormont said:

Certainly, there’s currently no evidence any further ‘guidance’ ever materialised. 

If McCarty indicates he started the process with guidance, would discuss getting more detailed guidance with them, we then also learn that the local propaganda committee somehow weighed in without the Hugo Admins being made aware of it as far as the leaked e-mails reveals (whether they were informed verbally, or McCarty had separate emails about it not privy to Lacey, who knows), it seems pretty clear that the "silent" Chinese were not, in fact, silent behind the scenes. 

 

[mormont]

I'll concede that McCarty probably thought he had received 'guidance'. But that 'guidance', as I say, is so limited and non-specific that it doesn't seem likely it was official, and in fact seems consistent with a well meaning Westerner having a conversation with local concom members about possible censorship and going away thinking that some offhand comments were actually Serious Business.

That would also fit with the Keystone Cops attempts at 'screening', where nobody seems to understand what they're actually looking for, the results are incomplete or flat wrong, and the application of the information to exclude nominees seems almost random.

I may be wrong. The Sichaun propaganda committee might have been behind this inept farce. One would hope the CCP can do better. But I'm inclined to think that assumptions drove this whole mess from start to finish.

As for McCarty's concern to protect the Chinese concom, to judge by results, he could hardly have handled that worse. I mean, you quoted an email where he lands them right in the middle of this, in writing, when he had no need to. He's repeatedly made the situation worse and drawn more attention to it. He blustered and hung on when he should have quietly resigned with a letter taking the whole blame on himself. If his intention was to protect the Chinese concom, that goes down as another thing he made a mess of.

[Kalbear]

Well this really sucks.

Quote

 

As Vazquez stated in a follow-up comment, “I have a lot of love for Chinese fandom and my friendships and connections there run deep. That’s a real and vibrant fandom there that is, like us, wanting very little to do with their government being involved in their fandom. They definitely don’t think it’s their government and instead think its corporate interests or, even worse, a fan/pro organization. Honestly, they seem more scared by that than anything else which saddens me to see and despite multiple attempts to get them to share their story they seem really hesitant.”

He elaborated further: “They don’t seem to fear official reprisal (the CPC seems to want to find who’s responsible for embarrassing them on the world stage actually) but rather ostracization from their community or its outright destruction. If I were to hazard a guess, the way we blew up this affair in the international media has now put this fandom in very serious trouble. Previously, it was one of the few major avenues of free speech left in China. Now, after all this, the continuation of that freedom seems highly unlikely.”

 

I can vaguely squint at what happened as a way to potentially protect those fans, but at best that was massively incompetently done and at worst caused a massive repression of freedom. 

[Zorral]

This debacle just keeps on keepin' on: pieces on it in both the NYT (long and detailed) today, and also even on The Hill -- which I didn't read, but it was headed by photos of Neil Gaiman and others who were canceled out of the running.

[Stego]

On 2/15/2024 at 1:39 PM, Ran said:

I still disagree that the Chinese principals weren't involved. It's one of the very first things McCarty says in the e-mails, that his understanding of finding things having to do with Tibet, Hong Kong, China, etc. was drawn from his Chinese counterparts, and he said he'd get more guidance from them. I find it improbable, at best, that the Chinese Hugo Award Administrators were not in the loop.

100% Say it again for the people in the back. 

[mormont]

Things Dave McCarty says have, for me, zero probative value at this point.

The bit that's drawn less attention, but is growing as a factor, is McCarty chucking out unknown (but very high) numbers of ballots for Chinese language works without any justification other than 'I think this recommendation list is a slate'. Even if it was a slate, that's what EPH is for: the rules don't say slate votes get disqualified on the say-so of the Hugo Administrator.