The 2023 Hugo Award Stats Final report posted today on the official Hugo Awards website revealed that the Chengdu Worldcon’s Hugo award subcommittee made many startling and sometimes unexplained rulings.
R. F. Kuang’s novel Babel, winner of the 2023 Nebula and Locus Awards, was ruled “not eligible” without explanation, even though it had the third most nominations. The EPH point calculation used to determine the Hugo finalists shows the count for Babel was stopped in the first round, and it accrued no more points when other works were eliminated in the automatic runoff.
(The Google Translate rendering of the Chinese is “Not eligible for nomination.”)
Paul Weimer was another “not eligible” kept off the ballot without explanation, despite having been a Best Fan Writer finalist for the past three years. Weimer had the third most nominating votes this year – and in that category the EPH calculation was completed, showing he ended up with the second highest point-count.
A third such “not eligible” was Xiran Jay Zhao, ruled out of the Astounding Award. As noted here in a comment on the announcement post, it should be impossible for a first-year-of-eligibility Astounding Award finalist to be ineligible the following year unless either they already won the award or the original Hugo committee (Chicon 8) erred in their eligibility determination.
And episode 6 of Neil Gaiman’s series The Sandman (“The Sound of Her Wings”) was labeled “not eligible” without explanation, while the series itself was disqualified from Best Dramatic – Long Form under Rule 3.8.3. The WSFS Constitution’s rule 3.8.3 says a series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form finalist, or an episode of the series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form finalist, but only one or the other may be on the ballot, the nod going to whichever gets the most nominating votes. Once the episode was removed there was no longer a rule 3.8.3 conflict. Keeping Neil Gaiman’s work off the ballot entirely was the result, however explained.
File 770 asked Dave McCarty, a Chengdu Worldcon vice-chair and co-head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Division, the reason for these “not eligible” rulings. He replied:
After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.
File 770 then asked Kevin Standlee, among the best-known interpreters of the WSFS Constitution, what rules there could be in addition to the Constitution. Standlee pointed me to his article posted today, “Elections Have Consequences”.
…An overwhelming majority of the members of WSFS who voted on the site of the 2023 Worldcon (at the 2021 Worldcon in DC) selected Chengdu, China as the host of the 2023 Worldcon. That meant that the members of WSFS who expressed an opinion accepted that the convention would be held under Chinese legal conditions….
…When it comes to local law, this could end up applying anywhere. Here’s an example I can use because as far as I know, there are no Worldcon bids for Florida at this time. Imagine a Worldcon held in Florida. It would be subject to US and Florida law (and any smaller government subdivision). Given legislation passed by Florida, it would not surprise me if such a hypothetical Florida Worldcon’s Hugo Administration Subcommittee would disqualify any work with LGBTQ+ content, any work with an LGBTQ+ author, or any LGBTQ+ individual, because the state has declared them all illegal under things like their “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” laws and related legislation….
Fans are clearly expected to infer these Hugo eligibility decisions were made to comply with Chinese rules or authority, but no one is saying what Chinese rules the Hugo subcommittee was operating under, unlike Standlee’s hypothetical which is based on Florida laws and policies that can actually be pointed to. Another unaddressed question is whether the administrators made these decisions on their own, voluntarily, because they were afraid not to disqualify certain people, or because they were told by someone in authority that’s what they should do.
Paul Weimer has written a response to being ruled ineligible on his Patreon – “Chengdu, I want some answers. Dave McCarty, I want an explanation. I am owed one.”
OTHER RULINGS. In a few cases, the report explains an item’s ineligibility in a footnote.
Best Related Work – The History of Chinese Science Fiction in the 20th Century was disqualified because one of the authors was on the Hugo subcommittee.
The Art of Ghost of Tsushima was first published in 2020.
Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form – Andor (Season 1) and Sandman – Rule 3.8.3 (knocked off the ballot because individual episodes got more votes in the Short Form category)
(And yet down below the individual episode of Sandman was knocked off the ballot as an unexplained “not eligible.” What kind of Catch-22 is that?)
Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form – The Severance episode was a Rule 3.8.3 disqualification going the other direction (the series made the ballot).
The Deep. — Deep Sea, which is the Chinese translation given in the report, is said in a Chinese footnote to have been “published years ago.” (Alternatively, this could refer to the animated movie Deep Sea, whose release date per IMDB was 2023, later than the eligibility period.)
In one case it is possible to deduce the likely reason for the “not eligible” ruling though not explicitly said in the report.
Novelette – “Color the World” by Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu was first published in 2019 (see “Stories 小说 – Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu”).
But it is not explained why Hai Ya’s “Fogong Temple Pagoda” was ineligible for Best Short Story, although the problem must not have been with the author because his “Space-Time Painter” won the Best Novella Hugo.
DECLINED NOMINATIONS. S. B. Divya’s public announcement about declining two Hugo nominations encouraged speculation at the time that many more people were following suit as a political protest. In fact there were not that many refusals, and it’s not demonstrable that any of the others were protests.
Who declined?
Becky Chambers — (Novella – “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy”)
S. B. Divya — (Novelette “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold”; also removed her name from the list of Hugo-nominated semiprozine Escape Pod’s team members. See “Why S. B. Divya Declined Two Hugo Nominations”.)
Prey – (film – from Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form)
Guo Jian – (from Best Professional Artist)
CUI BONO. Who got on because people declined?
Novella – Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire – which went on to win the Best Novella Hugo.
Novelette – “Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” by S. L. Huang
Best Professional Artist – Zhang Jian
Who got on where works or people were declared “not eligible” for one reason or another?
Best Novel – The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Best Novelette – “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” by John Chu
Best Short Story – “Resurrection” by Ren Qing
Best Related Work – The Ghost of Workshops Past by S.L. Huang and Buffalito World Outreach Project by Lawrence M. Schoen
Best Dramatic Presentation – Avatar: Way of Water; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Severance (season 1)
Best Fan Writer — HeavenDule
ERROR WILL BE CORRECTED. In the Best Novelette category “Turing Food Court” appears on two different lines of the report. Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty explained, “It 100% is a copy/paste error that I missed in the dozens of back and forths between me and the Chinese folks handling translations.”
UPDATE 01/20/2024. The amended report is now up. Here is the corrected Novelette page. (Thanks to Mr. Octopus for the story.)
Update 01/28/2024: Added a paragraph to make the ineligibility of Neil Gaiman’s works part of the lede. That had only been discussed in the category analyses.
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So, several of the entries make it clear WHY said works were ineligible: previous publication, per 3.8.3, and so in. Yet several are given no explanation. I’m curious, Dave, if you were on said admin team, if you could share the reasons behind those decisions. Did you, as a member of the admin team, offer an opinion?
(For real, I’d be shocked if Dave actually provided an answer, presuming he even comes and reads the comments.)
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and then what the correct result should be. will they release another correct version to show the correct title? this is an error after 90 days preparing the release and we found the error in 5 minutes. Not a good job at all Dave.
And we will see if Dave and Chengdu give me and the other Ineligibles any answers.
Click
“Color the World” was first published in Chinese in 2019, but not published in English until 1st Jan 2022 in ‘VITAL: The Future of Healthcare’, so was covered by 3.4.1 Extended Eligibility.
Dave McCarty’s “comment” is simply disingenuous bullshit.
Jay Blanc: The Internet SF Database shows there is conflicting information about the Vital release date; the other option is December 2021. But your point about the rule for first English publication is relevant.
Adaoli on January 20, 2024 at 6:28 pm said:
The corrected version of the results, showing that one of the two entries shoudl have been for “Upstart,” was posted today, January 20, 2024, at 15:30 Pacific Standard Time. Assuming that the timestamps I see here are the same timezone in which I live, that was three hours before you asked the question.
I’m not part of Hugo Administration, but I’m one of the people who manages the content at TheHugoAwards.org. When Dave sent me the corrected results, I dropped everything and corrected it.
I asked Xiran Jay Zhao about it and it was the first she’d heard, so she wasn’t given a reason or asked anything re: eligibility either.
ETA: “and the rules we must follow” is neatly ambiguous. The constitution rules… or rules from somewhere else?
By the way, I’ve encountered people today who insist that a Worldcon doesn’t have to follow local laws if they don’t want to do so. At least one of them says he’s a lawyer. I’m not a lawyer; I’m a computer programmer, but I don’t think I’m allowed to ignore laws that I don’t like.
From my mere computer programmer view of the world, conventions are events that are subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which they are located, and it doesn’t matter if their laws contradict our rules. The phrase “I fought the law and the law won” comes to mind here.
clicky
So, basically they’re ineligible because they’re ineligible?
We’re here because we’re here because we’re here…
Click
Considering Standlee’s hypothetical of a Florida Worldcon where state laws dictated censorship of an Award Ballot…
Section 2.6 sets out what is supposed to happen when a Worldcon is unable to perform its duties. Being subject to state censorship that causes eligible works to lose their place on the final ballot would mean that a proper Hugo Award could not be administrated. The Prior or Succeeding Worldcon should intercede to ballot WSFS membership on how to proceed.
We should probably talk about why this did not happen when it was clear that Chendgu would not be able to administrate a Hugo award according to set out requirements and procedure.
Can Section 2.6 be applied retroactively?
Not to be pedantic, but do the Hugo rules actually state, explicitly, that censorship is grounds for some sort of action? Because I have some concerns that without that then “proper” is a matter of opinion rather than rule, and that means no intervention.
See also: Puppy mess on ballot.
@Meredith
From what Kevin’s been saying, no, this isn’t against the rules, and there is no political will to make it against any actually enforced rules. Which is unfortunate for the reputation of the Hugos in general (I know they’re supposed to be reinvented every single year, but realistically I think most people conceive of them as an award series, not a collection of unrelated one-off awards), but it’s the way it is.
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“Where are the Hugo Awards” is an interesting question. I know where Worldcon is in any given year. I know where the Hugo Award Ceremony is in any given year. But where are the Hugo Awards as a thing? Do they have to be where the Worldcon is? Is the WSFS subject to the laws of whatever country Worldcon is held in?
@Bonnie McDaniel: It clearly expresses exactly what he intended, which is absolutely nothing.
PhilRM: While what you say is fair in many respects, what he said was not literally devoid of information, though it’s certainly not to be designed to helpful. The “and” statement is telling us that he regarded his actions as governed by rules outside the WSFS Constitution. We’re supposed to be satisfied with whatever we guess that to mean.
“After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.”
Bullshirt. Utter forking bullshirt.
I am inclined to think — and this is me, not a Universal Imperative — that people will be endangered if we continue to ask Why. Why is pretty clear at this point; we’re being told Why by what’s not said.
Writers have been wronged. I have no idea whether any of that can be recompensed. This is dreadful.
The question is, what do we do (A) to right the wrong without reference to the Chengdu committee, who are clearly not able to right it, and (B) to keep this from happening again?
Oh, and @Kevin: Mike Dunsford is a very real lawyer, and knows what he’s talking about. https://bsky.app/profile/questauthority.bsky.social/post/3kjhqwjdatn2s
Even with just the delay in the release of the stats, there were Chinese fans in China asking for answers. I don’t think the why questions are going away any time soon.
@Madame Hardy people who might hypothetically endangered were in no way forced to serve on the Hugo committee.
Paul Weimer: I’m a science fiction fan, obviously, yet after applying all my imaginative resources I still haven’t been able to make up a reason why a Chinese Worldcon committee would want to do this to you.
What I take from Dave McCarty’s wording is that he still has loyalty to his fellow Hugo Committee members who live within reach of the political authorities in question.
I would not press hard for more. Kevin Standlee’s title has it exactly right: elections have consequences.
Demands for detailed explanations of the eligibility issue are coming from a Western viewpoint of “due process,” and I don’t think that concept applies to political issues related to the national government of China.
(Madame Hardy slipped in while I was composing my reply)
Kevin Standlee’s Florida analogy doesn’t work. LGBTQ+ content is not illegal per se; it is illegal in schools and (possibly) libraries, at least according to the law as passed. Florida cannot make such works illegal per se (see First Amendment), so a Hugo committee deeming them ineligible because of some non-applicable and probably unconstitutional law would be derelict in their duties.
This does not mean that there is not some arcane Chinese law we don’t know about.
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I’m not wholly convinced that fen complaining about potential impropriety in the Hugo Awards that would have been at the behest of the government is likely to endanger anyone for the thing they were told to do.
But it’s not entirely comfortable to make that argument: Certainly if it did endanger people then complaining about the management of an award wouldn’t feel particularly worth it, as causes and effects go.
Camestros Felapton on January 20, 2024 at 8:01 pm said:
WSFS rules say that the Worldcon is responsible for administering the Worldcon. The Worldcon is where it is, and in the case before the bar, the legal entity running the Worldcon (and thus running the Hugo Awards) is in China.
Never forget that WSFS does not run the Worldcon. Individual legal entities who are given the right to host the Worldcon under WSFS rules run Worldcons. Think about what compels a Worldcon committee to follow WSFS rules.
Madame Hardy:
I concluded that Mike Dunsford’s opinion is that a Worldcon isn’t required to follow any laws that they don’t like, and that obviously the WSFS Constitution is superior to any country or locality’s laws or government procedures. I invite him to try doing that, but I know I wouldn’t be willing to risk it. You might eventually win your case, but how long do you want to sit in jail waiting for it to play out?
Evelyn C. Leeper:
I guess that the hundreds of laws that have been filed just this year attempting to erase the existence of LGBTQ+ and to make it a crime to even mention such people don’t exist, and there obviously isn’t a very strong nationwide campaign trying to criminalize anything related to trans people. (They’ll work their way back down the list of letters once they manage to Ban the Trans.) That’s why Florida has been identified as a Do Not Travel state if you’re trans, and why Utah (where the legislature is attempting to ban trans people from all public restrooms or at least to force them to use the restrooms of their gender assigned at birth and essentially to criminalize any gender-non-conforming people) is about to join that list. The people fleeing those states don’t exist because they fear for their lives being in a state that wants medical personal to be able to refuse them any form of treatment, I guess. And obviously the US Supreme Court will uphold the defenses against those obviously unconstitutional laws just like they upheld Roe v. Wade. Oh, wait a minute….
I wrote a comment that got eaten. In short, anything that disrupts Hugos degrades the awards, those deserving them, and us fans.
Kevin Standlee: I concluded that Mike Dunsford’s opinion is that a Worldcon isn’t required to follow any laws that they don’t like, and that obviously the WSFS Constitution is superior to any country or locality’s laws or government procedures. I invite him to try doing that, but I know I wouldn’t be willing to risk it. You might eventually win your case, but how long do you want to sit in jail waiting for it to play out?
Let’s assume the validity of the “The Hugo Admins must doctor the final results so as to avoid violating China’s draconian anti-human rights laws, to protect the safety of the people in China who are connected to the convention” argument.
So the Hugo Admin, who actively promoted the Chengdu bid and very nastily attacked and criticized the WSFS members who objected to the bid for precisely this reason, and who is deeply familiar with the content of works which regularly make it to the Hugo ballot, knew that the Hugo Admin would have to commit fraud in order to comply with China’s laws.
And yet he chose to promote the bid anyway, and he chose to take the position of Hugo Admin knowing he was going to have to commit fraud.
Let’s be honest. Every. Single. Year. this person has been Hugo Admin, there has been some sort of clusterfuck. In years when I find out he’s been given the position, I pop some popcorn and sit back just to see what form that year’s Hugo Clusterfuck is going to take. But this year, his actions are absolutely indefensible.
And if you’re going to doctor the Hugo nominating stats, it’s not that difficult to do it in such a way that the numbers actually add up. He’s had 3 months to shuffle numbers until they do what he wants them to do but still add up correctly. I mean, JFC, this guy can’t even commit fraud competently.
I’d like to believe that he would never be given the opportunity to screw us all over again in the Hugo Admin position — but given some of the people involved with upcoming Worldcon bids, I suspect it’s too much to expect them to have the integrity to keep him out of the process.
Kevin Standlee:
This seem to me a very hyperbole reaction. If a work isnt illegable after Chinese laws (and the Chinese actually care enough to cause legal action against awarding an award on their soil, that is mainly non-chinese) why is this reason not listed? “Inelleibile for legal reasons” or “paragapghrah XY dismissal” would have been sufficient.
If the reason is unlisted this is either not really the reason or its less of a case of “The censors made us do it” and more of “we made it so the censors dont see us”.
So we should probably find out what the reason really was, before we start to defend the reason, we speculate might be behind this. Similiary as JJ said, it should be avoided to send World Con to places where works can be considered ineligible for political reasons, i.e. censorship.
If this nonsense is indeed is the result of Chinese government censorship — a possibility which is thoroughly plausible but by no means a foregone conclusion — it’s unlikely that any explanation was provided, nor should any be expected. That’s just not how things are typically done. A thoughtful suggestion is made by a senior colleague, a friendly stranger pays for someone’s elderly mother’s weeekly groceries, someone’s else’s tweenage nephew gets a good citizenship award mentioned in the district newsletter, the thoughtful suggestion is carefully implemented. No official action is taken, no notice is given, no documentation or explanation is ever forthcoming.
If you have a problem with that and you voted for Chengdu Worldcon, well, it’s not like we didn’t warn you.
Are there not notes or minutes of the day, when decisions like these are/were made by the admins and or the committee?
I guess what I’m getting at is that at some point there was a conversation between individuals in a room somewhere……and what does that look like?
And who was involved and in that room?
@Mike VanHelder wrote: “…That’s just not how things are typically done….”
Finally, we have someone who has an insight on “how China works”
A lot of people around the world are in prison or worse for doing things their country’s constitution says they’re free to do. Others have found their lives badly messed up without being charged with anything. Saying “We had the legal right to do this” is poor consolation in these cases.
The local laws thing is tricky. We also had 2 candidates in the past that weren’t distributed to the Members of the Worldcon because they might violate laws in certain countrys. (Both puppienoms, one where my homecountry would be concerned)
I have a problem to say Worldcon can just ignore this laws because well people going to prision is problematic.
What I have a problem with is doing this in secret. Normally we can’t allow this nomination because laws would be honest and for the most part I would exspect at last the international SMOFs to be honest here. It would hurt the chances of a new chinese Worldcon but this is about it.
Now the whole thing looks like it was tryed to be very quietly.
Also that is for further Administrators. It would be nice to have the writers of the works mentioned in the longlist, first as sign of respect second so that people can cheek them out more easily.
@StefanB
I think you’re talking about the Hugo Packet? Which is not actually a part of the Hugo Awards administration, and organised voluntarily as a courtesy to voters. The distribution of the Packet is an entirely different matter. Those problematic authors were still nominated, the WSFS declined to re-publish their works.
I certainly do not expect or demand people to break the laws of their home nations for the Hugo Awards.
What I do expect is that any Worldcon that would be unable to even allow the nomination of any particular work or author, should invoke Section 2.6 and release that function back to the WSFS, and allow the WSFS to decide how to proceed.
The problem is that institutional paralysis and lack of any means or will to enforce Section 2.6 is what created this mess.
I still haven’t been able to make up a reason why a Chinese Worldcon committee would want to do this to you.
Offline, friends have come up with three theories as to why the committee did this to me. I hate them all. But they are all clearly outside the bounds of the WSFS constitution itself, and I may never know.
From what I know of Ms. Kuang, I suspect that she’d take being effectively banned by the current regime in Beijing to be a badge of honor.
Also, considering that “Legends & Lattes” and “Nettle & Bone,” had more nominations together by those folks who bothered to nominate than “Babel,” I think it was built into the final voting slate that the winner was going to come down to one of those two books, as “cozy” fantasy is apparently the flavor of the moment.
Jay Blanc: the Hugo Packet? Which is not actually a part of the Hugo Awards administration
The Hugo Voter Packet is indeed a part of the Hugo Awards Administration, and is produced by people within that division who contact all the finalists requesting submissions and then compile those into the packet and make it available for voters to download.
Shrike58: considering that “Legends & Lattes” and “Nettle & Bone,” had more nominations together by those folks who bothered to nominate than “Babel,”
Based on the anomalies in the clearly-doctored statistics we’ve been given, I don’t think any conclusions can be drawn about any of the Hugo nominations from last year.
This. I don’t think there’s a hidden meaning to the lack of clarity about the works that have been declared ineligible (though I wonder if some of them were groups that never could be contacted – yet another huge failure). It’s possible that the internal staff at Worldcon decided to censor some things, but the lack of a statement saying that a work is ineligible for legal reasons to me suggests that it wasn’t due to a official legal restriction. And especially since if it were, Worldcon staff members or staff-adjacent members not in China could definitely offer some sort of vague explanation.
(A far easier form of censorship would have been to just doctor the report so that the censored nominee didn’t receive enough votes. We know from the duplicated name that the tables are assembled from the data rather than directly copied over. I’m wondering if that’s what actually went on with Babel – if I’m reading the official numbers correctly, it allegedly wouldn’t have made the shortlist anyway. The fact that it was then deemed ineligible is irrelevant.)
Ironically, just today, the Golden Rooster nominees just got released, apparently causing a huge amount of controversy, and the organizers of those awards are playing defense on social media, trying to explain the selection process and emphasizing their “openness and transparency”. The fact that the Worldcon staff isn’t doing the same doesn’t seem to be something that’s innate to Chinese culture.
I am shocked to receive a report like this one. As a Chinese fan, I must say that I am shamed if my country brought such a hugo and such a hugo award.
I believe there might be controversies about policy and laws in China. But before that, I have to point out some annoying facts. We can easily find out that the committee do not finish any report before the deadlines, like an undergraduate who is busy finishing his final reports. But they are a national committee that declares that it consists of professional sci-fi experts from China and all parts of the world! The attitude is a big problem, but Liang Xiaolan and her colleagues have never responded to sincere requests from anyone. She just failed all the tasks and declared that they won over and over again.
Babel is an example. Kuang is a part of Sinophone literature, and her works are published in China as usual, selected as an example of focusing on the voice of overseas Chinese. But she was deleted for some unknown reasons instead of breaking the law. Someone on the committee seemed annoyed by her excellent works because they show the disability of Chinese science fiction in recent years. So it might be deleted with a reason for “obeying the law”, but actually it is just because someone want to avoid competence or troubles.
However, if you cast doubts about that, you will receive no answer. The committee from CBD ar far from SF fandom. They don’t care about sci-fi and they can easily disappear from the fandom. You see, the voice of Chen Shi, Liang Xiaolan or others from CBD who seized the power of the Worldcon have disappeared immediately since October 23rd. They travelled to Smofcon40, experienced an expensive trip as they have enjoyed in Chicon8 and other Worldcons, spent over 2000000 CNY, and they could not send a video about what they did in it! They talked to the officers about the policies which try to innovate the science fiction industry (a confusing word) in Chengdu, but they cannot illustrate their conversations.
So the question is not the policies or administrations in China. They do not be activated in this event. Instead, most members in the committee worked with a business identity. There are some ridiculous things. And:
We must know.
We will know.
In addition, here is a report from the promotion of the Worldcon:
Hugo Awards Announced in Chengdu
If it was true, we should have received a much longer report. At least the committee should explain why most of the nominations were dismissed. it was just like that they used to announce that over 10000 members attended the Worldcon, but we could not see a 10000 member list.
@Jay Blanc:
My point was that we allready had at last one nominee (I don’t count the Tinglebook) that was problematic in the regard to laws of democratic countrys, we have not a disqualification based on laws before thats right.
@Paul:
I am sorry for you, I was a nominee not a voter and I am not sure if I got my fanwriternominees through, to be transparent I am sure I did nominate something that was also strangly disqualified.
@Shrike:
Even in a normal year it is not rare that nominations and winners are different we even had nominees that got last place win. Nominees is from fans of the work, winners have to influence a bigger crowd of people. We don’t know what would have happened. And this is only from a perspective of a normal Worldcon.
The controlling law for the Hugo Awards is that of California, surely?
“The Hugo Awards are trade/service marks of Worldcon Intellectual Property, a California non-profit corporation”
Worldcon Intellectual Property contracted the Chengdu Science Fiction Association to conduct the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards, but it seems clear to me that they are supposed to conduct that under California law, not Chinese law. If they were unable to follow California law (due to being located in China and subject to Chinese law), then it is their responsibility, as with any other contractor, to inform Worldcon Intellectual Property that they are unable to fulfill their obligations due to force majeure, at which point Worldcon Intellectual Property would seek another contractor – in this case, per clause 2.6 of the WSFS Constitution, “the other selected or future Worldcon committee”, ie “A Worldcon for our futures”, the 2024 Worldcon (I’m not sure, off-hand, what Glasgow’s legal entity is).
The responses here from the Chair of the Mark Protection Committee that the he does not regard failing to conduct the Hugo Awards according to the WSFS constitution and the laws of the United States of America and the State of California as being in breach of the obligations that CSFA has to WIP are very troubling to me.
To be clear, Kevin: I’m not saying CSFA should break Chinese law, but that they should state that they cannot run the Hugos and comply with Chinese law, and therefore the administration of the 2023 Hugos should be done by Glasgow. And that when they didn’t, WIP (ie, the MPC, ie you) should have taken the Hugos away from them.
Anyone have any thoughts on the following back-of-a-napkin idea on the beginings of reform…
The general gist of this is there needs to be a way of conducting an internal audit, or bring in external auditors. This is quite common in other organisations such as BAFTA, Cannes, et all.
Section 2.6 amended and overwritten as follows: