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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I think some of the published EPH numbers for Best Novel are mathematically impossible (involving Residual Light, The Red Stone, and The Mountain in the Sea). It’s possible that the already-known strangeness with Babel might be enough to explain that, but even that explanation seems strained.
Details: https://bsky.app/profile/voter.bsky.social/post/3kjm2if2k5c2b
Jay Blanc on January 22, 2024 at 2:24 pm said:
Really? I’ve been attending since 1986 and have never seen such an interpretation, aside from the fact that we’ve always allowed non-attending members to submit and co-sponsor proposals. Such absentees were never able to vote that I ever observed. Were you at one of those meetings where it happened? I’ve been at every single meeting since 1989, and I can’t recall it happening, but my memory is not perfect.
Proxy voting is generally prohibited unless your governing document allows it. I’ll go look up the reference in Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised if you don’t believe me. (RONR is the default parliamentary authority of the WSFS Business Meeting.)
Because a majority of the members present voted for it.
Video recordings of the 2010 and 2011 WSFS Business Meetings are linked from the WSFS website.
Lydia Nickerson on January 22, 2024 at 12:24 pm said:
Yes. It was called “Popular Ratification” and would have left the existing Business Meeting in place but would have required final ratification to be by ballot of the following year’s members. However, in order to get enough votes to get it passed the first time, it was tacked on to the existing two-year system, and thus would have required three years to get a constitutional amendment ratified. The year in which this proposal came up for ratification by the Business Meeting was 2015, which was a year when people insisted that even two years was too many, that we needed to invoke the Special SMOF Rules for making changes immediately (which don’t exist, and I’m not kidding about that name, as the person who asked me used that phrase and was surprised when I told him there are no such rules), and the proposal failed ratification.
Yes, Popular Ratification was my idea. I’m convinced that our current governance system is not fit for purpose. You’ve seen my idea and the scorn heaped upon it by OGH. I haven’t seen any other practical ideas other than just sleepwalk our way into oblivion.
RedWombat on January 22, 2024 at 12:50 pm said:
@Lydia Nickerson
I think it’s a good idea myself. OTOH, In 2014, the convention newsletter put out an entire issue devoted to the Business Meeting. In my opinion, it did not affect attendance that much. Nevertheless, I think it’s a good idea. Besides the core of people who attend most meetings, there’s a sort of penumbra of people who don’t regularly attend, but do monitor what happens, so they can show up if something that matters to them comes before the meeting — usually so they can vote it down, it appears to me.
I note that 2024 Glasgow intends to conduct advisory votes on those proposals up for ratification. The actual ratification votes will be at the Business Meeting. I applaud them for making this attempt to experiment to find out what practical challenges there might be in conducting such an advisory vote.
If someone else wants to propose this year what was called “Popular Ratification” back in 2014-15 and wants me to compose wording for them so they can put it before the 2024 Business Meeting, let me know. I tried once and was rebuffed, as I said above. Maybe someone else will be more successful.
Chris R on January 22, 2024 at 1:34 pm said:
You know, I sort of hope that happens, because I think that trying to conduct that meeting would be a nightmare, and the only way to find out is to try it. And the people who think it’s easy should be the ones in charge of trying to run it. I’m not being sarcastic here. I admit that maybe I’m wrong, but I have visions of a 1000-person Zoom call lasting around-the-clock.
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It’s certainl;y never happened at any Business Meeting that I’ve attended–including ConFrancisco, where I was BM Chair.
Mike Dunford: If I may, I will accept your comment as expanding on my take rather than being at odds with it. Crowdfunding, as you say, is another avenue to paying for litigation besides, er, actually paying for it, or getting it done pro bono.
I’m not a lawyer but I worked for decades in the tax litigation field, where people’s ability to pay for the contest often affects how willing they are to fight it out, even though the government is not allowed to factor that into the settlements being offered.
Chris R on January 22, 2024 at 1:34 pm said:
The removal of any possibility of remote participation in the BM is something that yeah, happened this past WorldCon, and yeah, is straight up bullshit.I am sincerely hoping that Glasgow and Seattle collectively can unbreak that.
Kevin Standlee on January 22, 2024 at 3:11 pm said:
You know, I sort of hope that happens, because I think that trying to conduct that meeting would be a nightmare, and the only way to find out is to try it. And the people who think it’s easy should be the ones in charge of trying to run it. I’m not being sarcastic here. I admit that maybe I’m wrong, but I have visions of a 1000-person Zoom call lasting around-the-clock.
To be fair, if 1000 people attended the physical meeting, it wouldn’t work much better.
I’ve been in an online conference that had about three times as many people as that, and we made it work. Of course, we didn’t use Robert’s Rules or anything like that: no-one had the right to speak from the floor.
Instead, you had to notify the chair 24 hours in advance of your desire to speak (including an outline of the arguments you intended to make), the chair would then balance the debate, to include all the most important arguments on each side, call the speakers in turn, cut them off by dropping the call when they hit time, and then hold a vote. Every debate ran to time because there was no way to stall, and the number of speeches was already determined – if you had 45 minutes, and each speech was 3 minutes, then that’s 12 speakers (not 15, you need time to call each new speaker and time for a vote).
You can’t do this with Robert’s Rules, which seems to me to be a fundamental argument against Robert’s Rules: in order to stick to a timetable, there must be a fixed number of speeches on any given motion, each speech must be of a fixed length, and it must be impossible to introduce new material from the floor, so amendments (and procedural motions to refer to a committee that will report next year, etc) have to be submitted in advance so they can be considered in the scheduling by the chair and so people are aware of them in advance so they can submit a request to speak on them.
Robert’s Rules are reasonable if your meeting involves relatively few people (or at least relatively few people who wish to speak) and you want to discuss the matter and give people a chance to realise that they want neither to approve nor reject the business before them, but amend it on the fly. But it doesn’t work if you have lots of attendees, and it wastes a lot of time if everyone’s already had the discussion online and the points people are raising are ones that most attendees have already heard and made their minds up on. Better to have a few formal speeches making the major points and get on with having a vote. Also, RONR works best if people are committed to attend every item; other rules work much better if most people aren’t attending the whole meeting, but want to just come in for a specific item that they are concerned with.
“The recent fan-related legal landscape includes multiple crowdfunded spite-driven lawsuits of dubious merit.”
Even the distant past of fandom includes multiple spite-driven lawsuits (I’m not qualified to judge their merit).
Regarding Business Meetings, I went to my first one at Discon and had a reasonably good time participating as a voter (though I had read a fair amount about them before going) – but I can easily see how they’re not for everyone.
Mike Glyer:
I think that’s fair. Key point is really just that the existence of (eg) gofundme reduces the barriers that would usually reduce the odds of a lawsuit being filed in situations where litigation would otherwise be cost-prohibitive.
This is, unfortunately, something that I think the MPC needs to be particularly aware of for at least the next several years.
@MixMat
It came up in discussions here a few years back and Mike laid it all out for us.
I am sad to say that the Google Groups link to rec.sf-lovers now tells me I’m not a member of the group and can’t see the messages. A couple of days ago I had reason to look up one of my old Usenet posts and couldn’t find it; this may have been why.
I get that the big issue is the unexplained disqualifications. But if there’s mathematical impossibilities in the published stats, that would be proof that the rot goes even deeper, and something that I think would demand a response besides “we followed [unspecified] rules”. I believe that may be the case; see my post “above”.
“Jameson Quinn on January 22, 2024 at 5:02 pm said:
I get that the big issue is the unexplained disqualifications. But if there’s mathematical impossibilities in the published stats, that would be proof that the rot goes even deeper, and something that I think would demand a response besides “we followed [unspecified] rules”. I believe that may be the case; see my post “above”.”
As respectfully as possible I think the existing situation demands more than “we followed the Constitution”… or… as I see it… “No Parking… sometimes”.
AdamTesh: I assume that by “the existing situation”, you mean “the disqualifications; ignoring any possible mathematical evidence of shenanigans above and beyond that”. If I’ve correctly taken your meaning, I don’t disagree; as a moral matter, disqualifications demand explanation, which hasn’t been given.
But as a practical matter, I think that “these numbers are literally impossible, what gives?” would be harder to fob off with “rules!” than just “why did you do that?”
Kevin, you were LITERALLY the person who told me that this was out of the question years ago, because attendees wouldn’t want another email.
JQ, I think the issue with the statistical impossibilities is very important because it’s something that can be pointed at for proof of shenanigans. Dave is stonewalling the disqualifications because no one can force him to be more specific than “I followed the rules, cope with it.” Proving that the results are mathematically impossible would be harder for him to wave away (though I’m sure he’d try.)
With regard to the Business meeting and so on, maybe have a discussion period conducted on Google Docs in a file to which all of those entitled to have a say can have access for, oh, a month or so, to argue/discuss/whine/beg/plead etc, then have a very tightly structured Zoom meeting for the actual voting? I’ve sat in on some very large Zoom meetings (to watch some of the US Election related trials) and though no one but the participants could speak, the size of the meeting wasn’t a problem on the face of it. I mean, a lot of EPH was hashed out like that and it’s been working great; I don’t see why the wisdom of crowds couldn’t be brought to bear on more issues in a similar way.
@Chris R on January 22, 2024 at 9:33 am said:
If there is no competing bid, how would they not win?
I think @RedWombat is accurately predicting what would happen. But the answer to your question is “None of the Above”.
It is an extremely good idea to talk more about the business meeting. Business meeting in Chengdu is weird.
The committee refused to mention it so that most members would not pay attention to it. Thus the meeting was crowded with people from Chengdu Business Daily. CBD might have sent their people to the meeting without verifying the membership so that they can pass several nominations.
I have wrote down these things in a 20000-Chinese-character-long essay. The essay will be finished soon. If you don’t mind, I will also be willing to talk about the background of ASFIC.
Chris R: they are currently the only bid. If there is no competing bid, how would they not win?
There are discussions of a Medium Viable Bid (as opposed to a perfectly valid Minimum Viable Bid) which would have a WSFS Business Meeting, and run the Hugo Awards and put on a very nice Hugo Ceremony, with a lot of barconning and possibly a nice banquet.
Quoting Kevin Standlee
I seriously disagree. If I were connected with Hugo administration, I would do no such thing. The Worldcon is an international event, the Hugos are an international prize, and, at least in the United States, local law restricting what could be placed on the ballot might run afoul of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, since the subjects under consideration do not exist solely in Florida. In fact, there’s a very good chance they are not published or produced in Florida.
In fact, Florida’s infamous “don’t say gay” statute specifically applies to material allowed and not allowed in public schools. That does not make it less noxious, however, but it does render the speculation in my previous post moot.
(In other words, crafted specifically to “protect the children” and not run afoul of the First Amendment.)
Laura wrote:
I have been lurking (and reading file770 intermittently before that) since at least 2014/2015; and that post in 2017 was probably what made me search for (and find) rec.arts.sf archive/google groups thread/posts that were originally from 1989(or around then) without being edited.
That was what i was referring to as being unsearchable when i tried to look/search/find again a few years later(maybe between 2020 till i dont remember when, maybe 2022).
As i was never on rasf (as i think i have read it referred to as) i am unsure of how to search here and now(or in the future). Thanks for linking the post now(though i may be unable to remember the link in future if i ever need to find it again).
From 2015, I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned in the past day or so?
Neil Gaiman joins authors in urging Chinese president to release jailed writers
“Jameson Quinn on January 22, 2024 at 5:36 pm said:
AdamTesh: I assume that by “the existing situation”, you mean “the disqualifications; ignoring any possible mathematical evidence of shenanigans above and beyond that”. If I’ve correctly taken your meaning, I don’t disagree; as a moral matter, disqualifications demand explanation, which hasn’t been given.
But as a practical matter, I think that “these numbers are literally impossible, what gives?” would be harder to fob off with “rules!” than just “why did you do that?””
I hear you. That said… what is to stop Mr. McCarty from playing the malicious obfuscation game with questions about demonstrated statistical problems?
He says “I see no errors”. You again point out what is wrong and he drops to his irritatingly petty “asked and answered” response.
He seems, to me, to be deep into his refusal to offer any detailed explanation and is gleefully trolling everyone who pushes him to be specific. I suggest an amendment to the WSFS Constitution that requires Hugo Administratiors to offer specific section and subsections justifying the disqualification of a work that receives enough nominations to make it onto the Hugo ballot… unless so disqualified.
Is there a way to know if other books were declared “ineligible,” ones that didn’t show up as finalists?
Andrew Gillsmith: Is there a way to know if other books were declared “ineligible,” ones that didn’t show up as finalists?
Questions of eligibility are only considered after EPH is first run in its entirety, and then only the finalists are checked for eligibility.
The only way to know if anything was just outright excluded from consideration would be if the Hugo Admin chooses to tell us. Obviously, that’s not going to happen.
“Is there a way to know if other books were declared “ineligible,” ones that didn’t show up as finalists?”
No, and that’s a further problem. Given how clearly sketchy the data that has been released is, there is no reason not to suspect that corrupt actions were taken that have not been made public.
In short, there is no reason to believe that any of the data that has been released has any validity, and no reason to believe that additional data has not been withheld.
Questions of eligibility are only considered after EPH is first run in its entirety, and then only the finalists are checked for eligibility.
I will also point out that the Hugo Admin has himself given us evidence that he has outright lied about following the rules.
According to the rules for EPH, the Admin is required to run it in its entirety before addressing questions of eligibility — yet he stopped running EPH for Babel after the first round. We know that for sure, because we’ve seen at least a dozen people in various places post that they had both that novel and one of the non-finalist novels on their ballot, and when the non-finalist was disqualified, Babel‘s point total should have increased, but it did not.
So we know that the Hugo Admin has lied about following the rules.
I’d like to believe that all future Worldcons will have the integrity to never let this guy near the Hugo Award process again — but knowing a number of SMOFs who value loyalty to their buddies over integrity, I’m not optimistic that will be the case.
@Jameson Quinn:
I don’t have a Bluesky account, so it’s easier for me to reply here, but I have looked at the EPH numbers for those three myself, and calculated that they were in fact possible. Unless I have made a mistake, the solution that I found for the simultaneous equations was:
Nominations for Residual Light (RL) only: 7
Nominations for The Red Stone (RS) only: 20
Nominations for RL + RS (only): 17
Nominations for The Mountain in the Sea (MS) only: 27*
Nominations for RL + MS (only): 2
Nominations for RS + MS (only): 63
Nominations for all three (and nothing else): 13
Nominations for MS and other works (but neither RL nor RS): 10*
(Note: The asterisked figures may be wrong, as I have taken no account of inward transfers to MS from other longlisted works: if so, the final figure could be higher than 10 but the sum of the asterisked figures would still be 37.)
Is this a valid solution for the relevant EPH numbers? I’ve checked it, and I’m fairly sure it is. Do I find them at all plausible? Definitely not.
With Dave McCarty obfuscating and calling anyone who asks questions “mentally challenged,” it seems unlikely that we will get answers about what really went down at Worldcon this year.
The value of a lawsuit is not the outcome but the opportunity for discovery and questioning under penalty of perjury.
The affected authors may not be able to show standing to file a lawsuit, but Worldcon members (who were defrauded and whose votes were dq’d) probably do.
@Peter Wilkinson: you’re right, there was an error in my math; the solution is possible. Your numbers are wrong, though; the nominations for all 3 should be 39, three times what you have.
I also agree that this is not plausible as an organic set of ballots.
Maybe. If I were defending Mr. McCarty and the Chengdu Hugos (I wouldn’t) I would file a motion… before discovery starts claiming that there is no claim here for which relief can be granted (FRCP 12(b)(6)). In other words the parties have to show they can get the relief they desire from the court… if they can’t as a introductory point… the court may dismiss before discovery can proceed.
I would very much like to see Mr. McCarty forced to answer questions about the DQ’s. I’m simply uncertain there is a mechanism that will work to create such a requirement.
🙁
The rules say nothing of the sort.
Section 3.8.2 says: “The Worldcon Committee shall determine the eligibility of nominees and assignment to the proper category of works nominated in more than one category.”
It’s usually been easier (speaking as a four-time Hugo administrator) for the administrator(s) to wait until something approaching a final llist is ready before checking the eligibility, because there’s usually a lot of dreck that gets nominated. But it’s not required to wait until then, based on that rule.
Ed Green wrote:
Sorry, I’m a bit autistic, and don’t always get humour, especially online.
peer wrote:
Perhaps, but changing the rules is a process, for which there are, of course, rules. It’s not a snap.
What one can do, what one should do, and what the rules allow are not completely congruent. As has been said by others, the process of Hugo administration has so far relied on trusting people always doing what they should do, with few tools available for dealing with someone breaking that trust. Now someone has, making clear the need for less trust, more verification, and better tools for dealing with rulebreaking. Adjusting the rules for such is a process.
RedWombat on January 22, 2024 at 5:36 pm said:
And people aren’t allowed to change their minds in light of additional evidence and persuasion?
I once stood up to speak in favor of a WSFS Constitutional amendment that reversed something for which I’d advocated in the past. I said, in effect, “I was wrong.”
Mark William Richards on January 23, 2024 at 2:36 am said:
I admit to the flaws in my analogy. Let me try again:
Imagine a state passing a law that any event held in any publicly managed or funded by government entity in that state (like say, a convention center with a government-controlled CVB), including any facility that runs any revenue from the state or any subordinate government entity in that state, be forbidden from engaging in any activity that “promotes” anything LGBTQ+. Yes, of course such a law is likely to be unconstitutional on its face, but this it the USA in 2024. The gamut of anti-LGBTQ+ laws already on the books in the campaign to erase all such people shows a checkered history so far. Some courts have blocked the laws pending further action. Some have allowed the laws to take effect pending trial at that court level. Nothing big has made it as far as the US Supreme Court. How confident are you that the Court that overturned Roe v. Wade on the grounds that it wasn’t “deeply rooted in the country’s history” would overturn such a law? At most, I put it as a coin-flip. Some of the conservative justices do seem to actually believe in freedom of speech, expression, and assembly, but other of them don’t care if they can hurt people.
So: assume a “no LGBTQ+ content” law passed. it would be quite difficult to find a facility in which you could hold a Worldcon that doesn’t have some sort of public funding, particularly if the wording were very broad. Worse, you might have already won your bid when such a law came crashing down upon you. I do not think it would be a stretch to say the inevitable court cases would be grinding through the courts, but a higher court might rule that they could go into effect until trial, which might be years away. If you were chairing that Worldcon, running its Hugo Award ceremony, or administering its Hugo Awards, you might be subject to arrest, and the event overall might be subject to government action to shut the whole thing down for “promoting obscene activity.” I wish I didn’t think this was plausible, but given that hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ laws are flooding the legislatures and courts around the country, and the current SCOTUS has not collectively shown itself to be much of a friend to anyone who isn’t a conservative man, I think that it’s much more plausible than it was a few years ago.
Beyond the technical wording of the Florida law, the effect of such laws is (as currently has been demonstrated) to create a chilling effect over what can be done or said in those areas. People are increasingly reluctant to say anything due to a fear of persecution from their government, even if what they are saying is technically legal.
@Kevin Standlee
I wrote this thing in my letter but because it is hidden in some sentences you might have not noticed it.
I used to inquire the possibility of a business meeting video with Chinese translation from the committee. Now even I posted the video but we can not see the Chinese version.
You mentioned that the committee had promised that they will finish this job. But will they continue to do it?
@Kevin Standlee
You have valid points.
I discounted the effect that clearly illegitimate, unconstitutional statutes might have in terms of a chilling effect, at least as long as such statutes are in effect before they are struck down by legal process.
Which is never a sure thing.
That was my mistake.
Never mind the legal landscape. Even attitudes on the part of local authorities could have a chilling effect.
The last decade has seen more and more LGBTQ+ presence in pop culture, in media, in politics, in daily life. If there is some sort of self-censorship or chilling effect going on, it is phenomenally ineffective.
@bill
It is, and it isn’t.
It depends on where you live.
I live in NYC, so I sometimes forget that there are large parts of the country that aren’t nearly as liberal or tolerant.
Mike Glyer said:
We’re fans, suspension of disbelief is our stock in trade.
@Kevin Standlee:
I’ve been tagged on Twitter by someone claiming that “Chengdu Science Fiction Association registered all the kinds of Hugo award in Chinese “????” (Hugo Science Fiction) as a trademark.”
Was the Mark Protection Committee aware of this?
@Mike, could you email that question to the MPC rather than draw out a public comment from Kevin here please? mpc at wsfs.org is the contact address for the MPC.
Chris R. (Looking around) Mike — me? I thought it’s Bruno we don’t talk about, not Brisbane.
reposting a comment I made on a different post:
It seems to me painfully obvious that whatever happens with the Hugos going forward, EVERYONE on the 2023 Hugo Committee needs to be blackballed from the Hugo Awards process indefinitely, no backsies.
I am serious. It is now obvious that the nomination numbers (at least!) weren’t counted correctly. It’s blatantly obvious that people & works were stricken from the ballot arbitrarily. Because we don’t know what happened, because it’s likely we’ll never know what happened, because none of the people on the committee came forth promptly to Tell All, all of them have to be assumed to be such bad and/or incompetent and/or uncaring actors that their presence will taint any future Hugo Awards Administration.
This is a Caesar’s Wife situation. Do we need to write to Glasgow? Is there any overlap between the Glasgow Hugo Committee & that for Chengdu?
@Mike Dunford: Kevin was cc’ed in a tweet about it on November 28th, as was I and a couple of other people, although the only other one who was a member of the MPC besides Kevin is Nicholas Whyte.
MixMat
If you can remember the year, it’s (at least currently) the first Google search result for: 1989 Hugo Award controversy
There’s also a search box in the upper right of every page here if you want to look just at File770.
@Mike Glyer, I meant Mike Dunford.
We regret the error.
@Chris R
You were only following the relevant rules.
I did correct myself according to the rules we must follow.
@Doctor Science said:
It’s not that I’m against this, but is there a mechanism to do so? As Kevin Standlee has been saying the entire time I’ve been lurking here, each Worldcon is an independent entity and apparently free to make its own rules so long as they accord with the existing constitution.
Which I think is completely bonkers, because it isn’t a system that incorporates “…but verify” into the structure.
Chris R: There ya go. Good to know the rules we must follow don’t exclude apologies. Not everyone seems to have read that part.