So, a funny thing happened on trigun twitter

(amazon link where its 50% off as of May 8th: https://www.amazon.com/This-How-You-Lose-Time/dp/1534430997/)

(more up to date version here because holy fuck did this escalate)

Art by Hugo Lambert

Like, obviously Matt deserves crap for how he's been handling this situation, but I feel like people have been focusing on the wrong thing.

Holy shit someone finally leaked what went down with the Hugos and from a quick skim it appears to be the worst possible scenario: that is, Western award-runners PREEMPTIVELY censoring anything they thought the Chinese government might not like. Clownery AND fascism.

My boyfriend and I are watching Ratatouille and he made a comment about the complexity of the sewers at the beginning.

So I, a nerd, go "oh boy do I have a book for you!"

Amd he goes "oh? What book goes that in depth about the Parisienne sewers system?"

And my friends, he was shocked at my answer.

Hugo

“What this means is that the entire 2023 Hugo scandal is something completely different from what we've understood it as during the last month.”

when Celia says "let's help each other out"

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Taylor Jenkins Reid, Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Garden in the Wachau (detail), c. 1939. Hugo Charlemont (Austrian, 1850–1939)

more on the hugos (not just 2023)

i am sorry buds but it has to be said: lots of talk about the 2023 hugo awards being fraudulent because of actions of leader dave mccarty. this is true. but if we are going to be REALLY honest there is a difficult truth to accept, ANY past hugos dave ran are likely fraudulent

i do not want to have to say this as it casts a lot of doubt and i honestly do not think there is any action that needs to be taken, we should keep trotting along and give credit to winners, but it should at least be addressed. THIS DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN ONCE, IT GETS NOTICED ONCE

just went back into old emails and dave was IN FACT in charge of both the years i was nominated. will i ever know if there is any legitimacy to those results? was it politically best for me to be nominated but MAKE SURE i dont win? who the heck knows.

of course i am not saying my trot is MORE DESERVING or BETTER than the winners these year (and like i said we should respect these results), but acting as though actions of dave and the committee only effect 2023 seems a little short sighted i am sorry to say. it is much much worse

heres the thing that really bothers me when scoundrels treat outsiders and marginalized buds like this (same feeling i got from texas library banning) CHUCK is suddenly the one who has to wrestle with 'should i speak on this? will i ever be nominated again for ANY award now?' THAT is insidious part

I love that Jeremy’s thought process is literally: oh we Trojans don’t suppress our anger it’s healthy to express your feelings! Except me :) I’ll keep all my problems buried so deep only the very edges poke out :) have you met my cardboard dog yet?

Marilyn Monroe with her dog Hugo in the garden of her home in Amagansett, New York, 1957. Photo by Sam Shaw.

Hi Neil,

Sorry if this is trivial but I'm a bit confused re: the Hugo Award. Isn't it an American award? What does it have to do with Chinese censorship?

Thanks!

The Hugo Award isn't an American Award. It's an award given by (and at) the World Science Fiction Convention, which moves around. In 2023 the Worldcon was in Chengdu, China.

In previous years the Hugo process has been commendably transparent.

This year a number of books, people, and things that people nominated, in order that they be on the voting ballot, were declared "ineligible" and did not appear on the voting ballot.

No explanation has been given for why this was or why any of the individual works were ineligible. No explanation has been given for why no explanation can be given, other than "after we reviewed the constitution and the rules we must follow, we determined the work was not eligible," with no explanation of what the "rules they must follow" are.

There is a not-unwarranted suspicion here that it has to do with Chinese censorship. Other explanations would happily be entertained but the complete lack of information is difficult to deal with.

Chinese Censorship of the 2023 Hugo Award Nominations

Back before the 2023 Hugo Nominations were conducted, I noted that the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo committee had inserted a worrying clause indicating that local government officials could invalidate nominations for breaching the norms and standards of China. I suspected this would result in arbitrarily applied censorship to control the ballot. I am sad and unsurprised to discover I was correct.

The 2023 Hugo Nomination vote data has been published (https://www.thehugoawards.org/2024/01/2023-nominating-and-final-ballot-statistics-published/), and includes notation where nominations were excluded from the ballot. Those with normal reasons, such as being in the wrong category or not being published in 2022 are identified with their reasons for exclusion. This time there are a number of nominations that are merely marked at "Not eligible".

Here is the list of those nominations, that would otherwise have been placed on the final 2023 Hugo Award Ballot.

Babel - R.F. Kuang - Best Novel: Very likely excluded for referencing student revolution, and the use of language and translation as coercive tools of oppression. Color the World - Congyun "Mu Ming" Hu - Best Novellette : A story about perception of, aid of, and discrimination against disability. Congyun Hu has left China and now lives in New York. Fogong Temple Padoga - Hai Ya - Best Story : Either there is something in the original Chinese that was not translated, there's a taboo subject that elides my reading, or this otherwise innocent looking near future tale of cultural building restoration was written by the wrong person. The Art of Ghost of Tsushima: Dark Horse and Sucker Punch Games - Best Related Work : The video game Ghost of Tsushima was subject to directed social exclusion for it's depiction of the Mongol invasion of Japan. Sandman, Amazon Studios: Best Dramatic Presentation (Long and Short) - A diverse and divergent cast, includes subject matter and social issues that are currently taboo in China. Paul Weimer - Fan Writer: Publicly Critical of holding a Worldcon in China. Xiran Jay Zhao - Astounding Award: Qualifying work "Iron Widow" is reimagined story of Chinese Empress Wu during a fantasy/mechanical alien invasion.

This raises a lot of questions as to if this basically taints the process, and what can be done about it.