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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@Marshall Ryan Maresca:
I would very much agree with this. The Puppies era should not be seen as tarnishing the Hugos; it served to strengthen the democratic process. Those awards certainly deserve asterisks with footnotes, but as I understand it, everything was conducted by the book.
What do you do with the 2023 results?
Yesterday I wrote to the Hugo Committee asking why certain works were rejected. Here’s the bounce message I got:
Well, then.
Zimozi Natsuco: So I must ask most of you: Where were you when we Chinese fans strongly disagreed with the sudden change of the date of the Worldcon?… what did you do? You had even not sent a message to Liang Xiaolan and told her that was wrong!
Zimozi Natsuco: I am afraid that you don’t care about the cons until this piece of Hugo news rushed into your eyes.
If you were reading File 770 last year, then you saw a lot of us complaining about the Chinese government taking over the convention committee and changing the date. A lot of us did care, a great amount. Our complaints were no more effective than yours were.
A lot of non-Chinese people who tried to contact the Chengdu committee had their e-mails disappear into the ether. I’m not sure what effect you think those of us who are not in China could have had on the Chinese government or its agents who were taking actions which affected the con.
@JJ
I think you miss the point. No one should have expected complaints to Chengdu to actually be acted on. It is absurd to have expected them to have voluntarily declared themselves incapable of proceeding. It is wilful ignorance to see the game of musical chairs, timetable changes, and communication blackouts then believe that all the promises made in the bid would be kept. It is supreme stupidity to see them outright declare they intended to exclude nominations that don’t meet Chinese norms and regulations, and think an e-mail to the committee might change their minds.
This is what galls me about the claim that you can not enact the incapacity clause without the consent of the Worldcon in question. It is a blank cheque for future Convention Bids with either self deluding incompetence or outright malicious intent. The incapacity clause should have been invoked to prevent this, now it must be invoked to retroactively repair the integrity of the Hugo Awards. Otherwise what worth are they?
Lydy Nickerson: Sometime back after one regular commenter told another to fuck off I decided to look at all comments with that word before letting them through the gate.
Feel free to keep using the word otherwise. And I am sorry that has to happen even when you are quoting my own use of it.
Zimozi Natsuco (re first comment of 21 Jan, 6:31 am):
As someone who was born, started to read SF and, had not been for some good turns of the wheel of Fate, would have proceeded to fandom in a country ruled by a Communist Party (which led, among many worse things, to failures in countless events organised by criteria other than merit and ability), I understand your feelings. I sincerely wish you (and everybody!) to see another Worldcon in China that would bring nothing but joy and pride to all involved.
Thanks, Mike.
Approximating what I initially said: One doesn’t have to think that McCarty was deliberately giving a sly screw you to have done what he did. In point of fact, I think that Cheryl was instead suggesting that publishing the information with clear discrepancies might have been a signal flare intended to say “something is very wrong here, please look at the thing that is very wrong.” Moreover, if McCarty had friends on the Chengdu concom, his delay, and adhering to the letter of the law might have been an attempt to provide them with cover while still waving a red flag that there was a problem.
None of this should be interpreted as saying that I approve of disapprove of McCarty in general, nor in specific. Just that there’s an interpretation that McCarty was actually trying to do the Chengdu people a good turn, not a bad one, and that we need a lot more info, first.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: There may be online communities where Anonymous Guy and Cowardly Guy talk to one another. I don’t want this place to become one of them. Show some respect for yourself and us and pick a regular handle.
“That’s an easy one. Worldcons don’t make the WSFS rules; the members of WSFS do. And if the Business Meeting acted the way that you say, I’m pretty sure that those members with standing (that is, other Worldcon members that year) who felt wronged by the action would take it to court and I think would prevail, although IANAL.”
As a lawyer, I would asses the chances of such a court action prevailing to be low. The business meeting is, legally, the members of WSFS speaking.
My assessment is that almost any court would tell those other members that they had the chance to speak at the business meeting, and if they didn’t do so, that’s on them.
I don’t see that there’s any way to invalidate the results. But that wouldn’t prevent the WSFS Business Meeting from authorizing a special Retro Hugo for the calendar year 2022. Wouldn’t exactly right any wrongs but it’s better than a bunch of asterisks in the Long List.
@Jay:
Any plan that requires the use of a time machine is a bad plan.
Given that, I assumed you were talking about what someone, maybe the Glasgow 2024 concom, should do now, not about what people should have done in 2022 or 2023.
My impression is that the incapacity clause was written for a situation in which it was obvious that a seated Worldcon committee would be unable to put on a Worldcon: either because they said so, or because of something like the entire concom dying in a freak accident, or a natural disaster destroying the host location a few weeks before the con was going to happen.
Kevin Standlee wrote:
I wasn’t hugely happy with my theory that the MPC could declare a Worldcon was
Wait, does this mean that there’s no explicit license?
“Wait, does this mean that there’s no explicit license?”
There is not.
One big problem with WSFS/Worldcon is that it is run as if it was a neighborhood potluck barbecue. That may have worked a long time ago, but the organization has outgrown that. Unfortunately, any time anyone suggests creating any kind of oversight, there is a huge outraged backlash that prevents it.
@Mike Dunford:
The question is not abusing. Instead, the question is not to do something. We must know the committee of Chengdu WorldCon was absent from many things they should do well. Comparing to criticism about the abusing the license, it’s better to urge them to realise the responsibility of making full use of the license and finishing the tasks of a Worldcon. They cannot finish every small things of the Worldcon, not because of the command of the administration, but because of their own disability. It is really difficult to ask a person who doesn’t know who is Liu Cixin or what is star wars to run a Worldcon perfectly and make it as a “shining worldcon”.
@Aaron Pound:
As a member who attended the business meeting in 2023, I am afraid that not all the members who attended the business meeting were members.
The business meeting held in Saturday might be filled with some strange people. I have to guess it because I cannot get a complete sheet of business meeting members from the committee now and it seems to be impossible.
Is there any way to extend the eligibility of the unjustly-excluded works? I mean, usually that’s done by the Business Meeting at the Worldcon and that would require a time machine, so I don’t know what mechanism could be used, but it seems to be the fair and just thing to do, since we can’t re-nominate and re-vote for 2023.
@Cassy B.: As I read it, it would require amending the WSFS Constitution either to extend eligibility or, as was suggested further up, to authorize a Retro Hugo (since normally those are only allowed after a multiple of 25 years), so both approaches would take two Business Meetings and couldn’t result in awards until 2026.
Extending eligibility also seems as though it would be somewhat unfair to “natural” nominees in the extended-to year, so if it has no procedural advantages and some other redress can be found, it’s probably worth avoiding that route.
(I’m very far from an expert on WSFS process though.)
A couple of links that might be of interest to some of y’all:
Interesting blog post about a way that censoring regimes tend to work, by Ada Palmer: https://www.exurbe.com/tools-for-thinking-about-censorship/
Xwitter thread by Arthur Liu about some of the issues with the stats release, including some things that I don’t think have been covered here: https://twitter.com/HeavenDule/status/1748783035552837860
@Madame Hardy
Every email I tried to send to the chengduworldcon.com address last year bounced. I had to go through the nominee liaison’s personal email every time.
More broadly, the question of “why didn’t you contact the concom” may be “because hardly anyone outside of China could get through the spam filters.”
@Lisa Hertel: That is even worse. It seems that the committee was afraid to share their ways to success, though they have declared their success for many times.
I have watched all the videos posted by Worldcon Events on YouTube about Smofcon 40. And I cannot find the one of Chengdu Worldcon 2023; 2021-2028 are almost there! So what they say about thier worldcon in this event?
In addition, you might misunderstand my “2000000 CNY”. Joining a worldcon or other cons is really cheap,and the host cannot benefit from the fees. But if you stay at 5 star hotel, fly in first-class and avoid strict and critical scrutiny from strict Chinese administration which hates corruption in recent years, you will spend over 1000,0000 even 900,0000!
@RedWombat:
A joke.
How to connect with Chengdu committee to get the refund of your changed Worldcon?
Write like this and they will not return it without reading:
And what will that accomplish?
The convention is over.
The Hugos have been awarded.
Without having read it, I see Babel is set in an alternate universe in the decades prior to the publication of The Communist Manifesto. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that Kuang’s social analysis of that fictionalized world is informed in significant ways by Marx’s critique of the real one.
I am having a very hard time imagining what could trigger any necessity to censor or block such a novel under any Chinese regulations.
Very sorry to see the Hugos gone down the drainpipe overall in various ways dating back ten years when awards became things people campaigned for rather just let happen as they did for me and others of my time in them. I see it this way, I had my fun in it years ago, and moved on, though I watch it all from the sidelines occasionally. I wish the whole thing luck….
@Robert Wood
I’ve only been following things for the last 10 years or so. I don’t remember there ever being no explanation. An explanation might not always be something that those outside the Hugo team thought was the correct call, but there has always been something specific pointed to…as far as I recall.
@Laura,
Yes, for example, the statistics for the 2022 Hugos (the one immediately preceding Chengdu) include reasons for exclusions. https://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf/2022-Hugo-Award-Details-Final.pdf
(- snark -)
Interference in the Hugo nominations? Let’s just consider this part of the aspirational goal of putting the World in Worldcon. All of the world, all aspects of it.
There used to be a saying: On the net, the 1st Amendment is just a local ordinance. Not directly applicable, but the sentiment captures the situation.
(- /snark -)
@aaron pound
I’m just a simple country lawyer but I do not understand how there can be an organization that exists to hold the IP but no license between that organization and the organization running Worldcon in any given year.
We can find out the report made by 2023 worldcon is very illegible. It just lists out the numbers without enough words illustrating the award and the flow.
“I’m just a simple country lawyer but I do not understand how there can be an organization that exists to hold the IP but no license between that organization and the organization running Worldcon in any given year.”
You see, if there was a formal license, then someone might be able to be held accountable, and we are all friends here and don’t want anyone on the hook for anything ever. Also, we are all friends so we just trust that the people using the implicit license will do the right thing, because putting anything into something as formal as an explicit license would mean we are saying we don’t trust our buddies and that would be rude.
Everything about Worldcon is almost intentionally designed to prevent accountability for anything. It is an inherently corruptible structure, and no one with any power to make changes wants anything about that to be changed.
@Mike Dunford
It’s how things work (or don’t) in fandom. Most years, there isn’t a problem.
– a rat minor (1984)
ps: a “simple country lawyer”?
@Soon Lee
Yes, 2022’s stats are an excellent example of how it should be done. And they came out in a timely manner.
@aaron pound:
Thing is, everything about trademark involves accountability on the part of the mark owner.
Did anyone remember to issue Mike Dunford a cat? Have we become inhospitable in my absence?
@Aaron Pound wrote:
”Everything about Worldcon is almost intentionally designed to prevent accountability for anything.”
Counterpoint: Worldcon’s structure developed so there is no point where lasting control can be seized.
IANAL, but if the Worldcon trademark is registered in California, doesn’t that mean that WSFS and the Hugo administrator are required to obey American and Californian law? Given that WSFS membership (whether attending or “just” voting) requires paying a fee, does manipulation of Hugo voting constitute fraud or some other form of financial malfeasance?
Beyond issues of legality, if some of the affected voters or creators are members of organizations like SFWA or the Authors’ Guild, are there grounds for a complaint to those organizations’ Grievance Committees? Will publishers and/or NetGalley be skittish about providing material in future voter packets if the Hugos fall into disrepute? Has it occurred to Dave McCarty that being involved in a vote-tampering controversy, even if it’s “just” for a science fiction award, is the kind of thing that can have social and professional repercussions?
These are all questions that the people involved in this mess should be thinking real hard about.
No one being accountable is a far greater danger than having a position where someone can seize lasting control.
And if your logic is that it’s okay to not have accountability because people don’t want to risk being exiled from the community and that forms an accountability– this logic does not make sense for the current size of WSFS, but if I grant WSFS logic on its own terms– in what way does that not apply to assigning someone to a position where they might be in lasting control? If you assume social power is a gate in itself, it’s a gate whether you have a lasting position or not. If it’s not a gate, none of the arguments about why WSFS must be the way it is apply.
The webpage on the WSFS Mark Protection Committee, which is the only permanent WSFS committee, says:
So if anyone is willing to kick the nest and comes up with a better structure and bylaws, they can run to be elected…
I did hope I would be wrong about this.
I only have the power to issue dragons, not cats, and I’m busy hoarding them all to myself. (Mine all mine.)
It seems to me that we’re not really getting a Most Years Everything Is Fine Experience of late.
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Worldcon Intellectual Property, Inc. is an IRS recognized 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable corporation that is incorporated under the laws of California. The many rules hedging in the activity of the corporation are not the kind of rules that would extend to who gets to be a finalist for a literary award or whether any reports about the award have to be disclosed, or accurate.
Say Glasgow, for some godforsaken reason, decided to blow a bunch of time and energy they almost certainly don’t have while trying to run their own convention, and did pull the trigger on Section whatever it is. What exactly happens next? I think people are generally in agreement that, whether they like every finalist and winner or whether every finalist should have been a finalist and not the frustrated seventh, everyone is more or less a reasonable finalist. There are no Puppy-esque finalists that will remain a stain long after 2023’s drama is yesteryear’s news. What, you want to retroactively remove their laurels? From completely innocent authors, artists and fen? Rerun the votes with an extra finalist in each category and have two Best Novel winners? What exactly is the ideal outcome? Extend eligibility so someone else gets to be the seventh when they ought not have been?
We can’t time travel and fix it before it happened. Seems to me interfering now only compounds the problem with new problems.
It would be nice – in the long term and for the sake of the longterm health of the Hugos and Worldcon I would suggest necessary – if it could be stopped from happening again (and again and again and again) but people with way more knowledge of the Business Meeting than I will ever have are saying that there are significant challenges there that cannot be solved by wishing.
So, I suppose, what’s the not-wishing-actually-fixing version? Is there a path to that? Sweeping change sounds unlikely. Incremental, at this point, is certainly better than not-at-all.
Sadly, if I were to set out to design the least friendly-to-concerned-newcomers event possible, the only way I could improve on my experience with the WSFS Business Meeting would be if I included pits of spikes. Which is a very longstanding problem, to the point where one begins to suspect it’s less a bug than a feature.
I think it’s probably going to take a bunch of reformers who also have a fetish for Robert’s Rules of Order to drag WSFS out of the “but everyone in fandom is FRIENDS so accountability would be like telling your friends you don’t trust them!” mindset. I wish them the best of luck, because they’ll need it.
Where does one find these rules? Because there seems to be little in either the WSFS Constitution or the WIPI articles of incorporation that would apply.
Also: there are in fact many rules that govern what has to be done in order to protect trademarks. Things like, eg, the need for some kind of quality control over licensees. Those are.legal requirements stemming from trademark law, with potential adverse consequences for the trademark if they are not followed.
I find it a bit strange that there is apparently little or no consideration of these issues.
2Mike Dunford
there’s https://www.thehugoawards.org/ (which doesn’t have obvious links to The Rules)
https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/a-short-history-of-the-hugo-awards-process/
https://www.thehugoawards.org/changing-the-rules/
Worldcon’s constitution and rules are linked on this page:
https://www.wsfs.org/rules-of-the-world-science-fiction-society/
I’m really not enjoying this. You know — or should — that in my comment I’m referring to the Internal Revenue Code and the laws of the State of California. I’m not proffering any rules you haven’t already found.
Mike Glyer –
I did not know that, in fact. In part because I’m not sure how either the IRC or nonprofit law would act to prevent an organization whose sole purpose is to protect specific IP rights from taking measures to protect those rights.
And what I said about quality control is a very real thing. It is possible for a trademark to be deemed legally abandoned if that gets messed up – there are real cases where that has happened. And one of the ways it can be messed up is if the mark is just licensed out with no means of controlling what it’s used for.
Mike Dunford: Okay, I begin to see how this went awry. My mistake was thinking Nina’s question was more universal than just about trademark law. No wonder we’ve ended up talking at cross purposes.
@Meredith – would it perhaps be of some use for Glasgow to trigger Section Wossit (which in fact is allowed to be triggered by a subsequent Con despite time’s stubborn unidirectional flow), declare “the ConCom for Chengdu did not or was not able to fulfill its responsibility to carry out a fair and transparent Hugo Awards process,” and then make one or more recommendations such as “the Mark Protection Committee should not permit use of terms like ‘Worldcon’ and ‘The Hugo Awards’ by any future committee with any of these people on it”?