Hugo Nominations & Awards: 2021 and Onward

[Ran]

I think the argument I've seen is not that it was just a slate, but that two or more big publications/publishing house in China colluded together to form a fairly unified slate, including some categories featuring only one recommended work, which goes well beyond your typical slate. EPH exists to deal with slates from a minority of voters having outsized power, but when multiple influential entities collude together to form a super-slate, it overwhelms the ability of EPH  and basically means that the result is determined by these influential entities.

As far as I know, only custom says publications can't do this -- if Random House, Tor, and Del Ray put out a super-slate where they divvied up the awards between them, and then 50% of the electorate voted the slate, I'm not sure if people would have felt that was kosher, but there's nothing in the rules explicitly against it. And yet, if it happened, I think people would be pretty pissed off, and there would be action taken to codify that this sort of collusion isn't allowed. And the stance of McCarty, at least, seems to be that the WSFS rules give the Hugo Administrators discretion to toss ballots if they believe they are outside the bounds of what WSFS envisions. And the fact that EPH even exists suggests that WSFS has previously shown a strong aversion to slates, and so the Hugo Administrator using their discretion to throw out ballots that were clearly part of this slate seems in line with a reading of the previously indicated will of the WSFS.

Above and beyond, we are told that the Chinese Hugo Administrators reviewed the nominated Chinese works because the Western administrators did not read Chinese and could not vet them, we know at least one Chinese work (Hai Ya's "Fogong Temple Pagoda") declared ineligible for no obvious reason that anyone can determine but given the previous that was likely a determination of the Chinese Hugo admin, and we know that the Sichuan propaganda committee took credit for having a hand in censoring the awards. I don't need to look at a single thing that McCarty has said to believe that we don't know the half of the role of Chinese administrators, local political or business interests, publishers, etc. had in this debacle. 

[mormont]

An alternative presentation of the same facts is: Chinese fans were super excited to be hosting their first WorldCon. Their home magazines did a thing that Western magazines do uncontroversially every year. The only difference was that the enormous number of Chinese voters and small number of Chinese SF magazines combined to concentrate those (perfectly legitimate) votes. 

In response, McCarty took it upon himself to disqualify a completely unprecedented number of votes for unprecedented reasons, apparently without telling anyone. He still has not explained this decision. There’s no apparent reason he could not do so in this case and the decision is arguably not very compatible with his professed concern for Chinese fandom. The effect is that the Chinese voters were disenfranchised, the first Chinese Hugos featured far fewer Chinese works than should have been the case, and many if not most of the actual winners now say they feel their award is devalued.

If McCarty really believed this decision was necessary. in the spirit of the award and proportionate to the issue at hand, he should have been willing to involve others in it and publicly explain it.

I’ve run student elections for years: back in the days of paper voting, I took care and concern over every ballot I had to disqualify and got a second opinion on each. If you have any genuine respect for a democratic process you’re engaging in, however trivial, you simply don’t throw out the opinion of a voter unless you absolutely have to by the agreed rules, and you don’t do it on your own, on your sole interpretation of what the organisation running the vote might or might not want. Unprofessional would be the kindest word for it, arrogant would be a less kind one. 

The combination of this and the background checks suggests someone who doesn’t have a great deal of genuine respect for the integrity of the Hugo awards.

Edited February 21 by mormont

[Ran]

36 minutes ago, mormont said:

Their home magazines did a thing that Western magazines do uncontroversially every year.

Which Western magazines bullets recommendations (e.g. offers up only one candidate in a category despite having published multiple eligible stories in a category) and which Western magazines that are publishers of nominatable fiction decide to include nominees from other publishers?

A quick Google shows that sites like Tor.com and Clarkesworld will publish lists of all their Hugo-eligible works in a given year, and Locus provides its very lengthy recommendation list yearly, but Locus is not a publisher of fiction but rather a trade magazine.

Edited February 21 by Ran

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

It seems that Mr. Tchaikovsky is rather disappointed by this situation… and the taint it puts on his Hugo.

https://adriantchaikovsky.com/?fbclid=IwAR1KZrUVrtU7qlUJuTz-zLnNLG6xDwwIErLMSL7CZBo2g6SH6gbyqEK0PmE_aem_AVLubmbi_xd4W0u2hR0aXCBzPHLtE6RfG25WsObvpjpw4ZVraV5HQVoQ5_-qQPxynAQ

[felice]

10 hours ago, Ran said:

I think the argument I've seen is not that it was just a slate, but that two or more big publications/publishing house in China colluded together to form a fairly unified slate, including some categories featuring only one recommended work, which goes well beyond your typical slate.

Recommending a single work isn't a problem; slates are bad when they allow a single group to take most or all of the slots in a category and shut out all other voices.

 

10 hours ago, Ran said:

Above and beyond, we are told that the Chinese Hugo Administrators reviewed the nominated Chinese works because the Western administrators did not read Chinese and could not vet them

And most of the Western voters don't read Chinese and couldn't evaluate them for voting. It really doesn't make sense for "in English" not to be part of the nomination criteria.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

4 hours ago, felice said:

<snip>

 

And most of the Western voters don't read Chinese and couldn't evaluate them for voting. It really doesn't make sense for "in English" not to be part of the nomination criteria.

this is true,  but it should be in the rules.  things should only be excluded as per the rules and at the moment there is no rule saying "in English" so they should not have been removed for that reason.

[felice]

1 hour ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

this is true,  but it should be in the rules.  things should only be excluded as per the rules and at the moment there is no rule saying "in English" so they should not have been removed for that reason.

Oh yeah, absolutely. The current rules explicitly allow for non-English works.

[Ran]

11 hours ago, felice said:

Recommending a single work isn't a problem; slates are bad when they allow a single group to take most or all of the slots in a category and shut out all other voices.

Normally, no, but when it's said several publications all put forward the same bulleted item, they appear to be colluding together to clearly influence the voters about what to vote for as a finalist, not just a nominee. 

It's really strange.

I do not blame Chinese fans at all in all this. I am sure they acted in a way that seemed entirely right and within bounds. The antipathy towards slating that exists at the Hugos, and efforts to defeat it, are something that most would have had no idea about. 

 

[mormont]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

I am sure they acted in a way that seemed entirely right and within bounds.

It didn't just seem that way: it was. It broke no bounds at all.

[felice]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Normally, no, but when it's said several publications all put forward the same bulleted item, they appear to be colluding together to clearly influence the voters about what to vote for as a finalist, not just a nominee.

That makes sense. But it's not a problem the way full slates are; voters still get to compare that work against the other nominees, and make their own decision. Unless they fear negative consequences for voting the "wrong" way, but that seems implausible over something this trivial.

[Ran]

50 minutes ago, mormont said:

It didn't just seem that way: it was. It broke no bounds at all.

Fair enough. The publishers were the ones out of bounds, the Chinese voters did not know better.

 

41 minutes ago, felice said:

That makes sense. But it's not a problem the way full slates are; voters still get to compare that work against the other nominees, and make their own decision. Unless they fear negative consequences for voting the "wrong" way, but that seems implausible over something this trivial.

True. I suppose the fact that nothing like this has happened before, though, is why people are bothered by the implications -- it really would be absurd if the biggest SF publishers in the US/UK colluded together to propose which of their works should be nominated and which works should win  awards, and people would be annoyed (rightly, I think) by this sort of naked attempt to influence the results. Recommendation lists are one thing, coordinating to try and decide who'll be getting awards is quite another.

The Western side of the debacle has much more transparency thanks to Lacey's e-mail dump, but we're basically shut out entirely on the Chinese side of it other than the very few details the Chinese local government and McCarty's remarks have informed us of to date, and what sleuths have figured out from Chinese social media and anonymous comments. 

It's interesting that back in mid-2023, the existence of this slate was known, and people were glad that EPH seemed to have limited the impact. And now we know that, no, EPH was not to thank for it, it took the administrators making the call that this mass of identical ballots were not organic.

ETA: Jeebus. Someone pointed me to tweets from ErsatzCulture, who had been digging through Weibo (Chinese social media), and a few days ago he shared a tweet he had founded that translated as an encouragement for everyone to vote, to read actively and choose their favorites... and doing so on their own behalf "(rather than the organisations collecting votes to manipulate)"

A symptom of just paranoia with this one Chinese fan... or an indication of just how fucked things were? A slate is problematic enough, the idea that some organization(s) were convincing fans to hand their ballots to them so they could submit them for them to manipulate the results...

Edited February 22 by Ran

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Fair enough. The publishers were the ones out of bounds.

Nope. The publishers broke no rules.

ETA - I would genuinely appreciate any links that explain why anyone is viewing this as deliberate collusion to rig the vote, because I cannot find anything myself, and to be honest, searching is hard because of the large number of articles, blog posts, social media posts and other sources saying that these publications did nothing wrong!

I'm struggling even to find out what the second magazine in this 'collusion' is. SF World and...?

The only one out of bounds here is Dave McCarty.

Edited February 22 by mormont

[felice]

10 minutes ago, mormont said:

Nope. The publishers broke no rules.

It might not have been against any specific rules, but it was still inappropriate.

[mormont]

5 minutes ago, felice said:

It might not have been against any specific rules, but it was still inappropriate.

Again, I'm going to assume and indeed insist that it wasn't until I see some sort of clear explanation of why it was, with details.

ETA - and I also want to repeat:

Even if the magazine(s) did do something wrong or inappropriate, that does not explain or excuse McCarty's actions. Those remain utterly wrong and shady regardless. Unilaterally throwing out hundreds of nominating ballots without consultation, and then concealing it, is not the way you deal with this.

Edited February 22 by mormont

[Ran]

15 minutes ago, felice said:

It might not have been against any specific rules, but it was still inappropriate.

Agreed. It's as inappropriate as the ballot stuffing attempt at Noreascon 3, and the Puppies, and is in some ways worse because it seems it involved the collusion of several professional organizations/publishers to manipulate the results.  If the claim from the Chinese fan has any truth to it, it goes well beyond just there being a slate, and there being an active effort for organizations to take charge of and submit ballots. 

"Oh, it's not against the rules", well, maybe not in China, but I think most of the Western world with a standard of democratic practice can immediately see the problem when that attitude meets a thoroughly-Western democratic process (largely designed by Anglo-American fandom with a smattering of like-minded western and northern European cohorts) which relies on these sort of shenanigans just not being something people would even countenance, and so rules did not have to be written for them.

But if the Worldcon is going to leave the sphere of the democratic states and democratic cultures of the world, then yeah, it looks like we're going to have to put in more rules for those who need fair play spelled out to them.

Edited February 22 by Ran

[mormont]

Again, is there any evidence that any of the above is true? I have looked, but can find none.

And is there any argument against the fact that notwithstanding what the Chinese magazines may or may not have done, McCarty's response was in every respect wrong, high handed, and a disgrace?

[felice]

11 hours ago, mormont said:

And is there any argument against the fact that notwithstanding what the Chinese magazines may or may not have done, McCarty's response was in every respect wrong, high handed, and a disgrace?

I don't think anyone disagrees with that!

[Gigei]

Read the leaked emails. It comes as no surprise that the person who wrote that most censorship is self-censorship was correct.

[williamjm]

The 2024 Hugo nominations have been released:

https://glasgow2024.org/hugo-awards/2024-hugo-award-finalists/

Two of the books I nominated are on the best novel list (The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi and Translation State), I haven't read any of the others yet.

I see that Xiran Jay Zhao got included on the Best New Writer list after being one of the people removed from last year's nominations, it seems that they sensibly decided to waive the normal rule about eligibility expiring after two years.

On 2/22/2024 at 1:25 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It seems that Mr. Tchaikovsky is rather disappointed by this situation… and the taint it puts on his Hugo.

https://adriantchaikovsky.com/?fbclid=IwAR1KZrUVrtU7qlUJuTz-zLnNLG6xDwwIErLMSL7CZBo2g6SH6gbyqEK0PmE_aem_AVLubmbi_xd4W0u2hR0aXCBzPHLtE6RfG25WsObvpjpw4ZVraV5HQVoQ5_-qQPxynAQ

Tchaikovsky has been nominated for Best Series again this year for a different work, his Final Architecture series, so does have an opportunity to get an untainted Hugo.

[Ormond]

On 3/29/2024 at 11:26 AM, williamjm said:

The 2024 Hugo nominations have been released:

https://glasgow2024.org/hugo-awards/2024-hugo-award-finalists/

Two of the books I nominated are on the best novel list (The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi and Translation State), I haven't read any of the others yet.

I see that Xiran Jay Zhao got included on the Best New Writer list after being one of the people removed from last year's nominations, it seems that they sensibly decided to waive the normal rule about eligibility expiring after two years.

Tchaikovsky has been nominated for Best Series again this year for a different work, his Final Architecture series, so does have an opportunity to get an untainted Hugo.

Is the "Best Game or Interactive Work" a new category? I don't remember that one from the past, but as I am seriously old and not the best at paying attention to the Hugos, maybe my memory is faulty.