Dave McCarty’s Facebook page is where some are trying – without success – to get full explanations for the ineligibility rulings in the 2023 Hugo Nomination Report released on January 20.
McCarty, a Chengdu Worldcon vice-chair and co-head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Division, previously gave File 770 this reason for ruling R. F. Kuang’s Babel, fan writer Paul Weimer, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman tv series, and second-year Astounding Award nominee Xiran Jay Zhao as “not eligible”:
After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.
People have been trying to pry more information out of McCarty in a prodigious exchange on his Facebook page. Initially he referred them to the original reply above. And slapped back at one fellow who persisted in questioning with “Asked and answered.” Then, when that didn’t silence the questioner:
And
Clearly, Joseph Finn isn’t Tom Cruise, and Dave McCarty isn’t Jack Nicholson.
Yet it’s an innate part of human psychology to want to be understood and accepted by other people. The need is so strong that even the formidable McCarty had to make some effort to answer this question.
Neil Gaiman has been quite upset about what is essentially a Catch-22 explanation – the Sandman series was a Rule 3.8.3 casualty, but the individual episode that triggered the rule was also tossed as “not eligible”. Earlier today he had this exchange:
Silvia Moreno-Garcia replied:
When Jon Nepsha tried to lay some guilt on McCarty his friend Tammy Coxen stepped in with a heavy hint that there’s a more noble explanation, it’s just not being said out loud.
But McCarty himself has taken the opposite tack by defending the adequacy of the report.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
McCarty’s comments are world-class non-answers, and his insistence that these ludicrously uninformative statements are completely adequate answers makes it even worse. No politician avoiding a straight answer at a debate even comes close to this level of stonewalling.
Gray Anderson’s suggestion is the most obvious explanation for this behavior, but if as McCarty insists nothing of the sort happened, it leaves one even more baffled than before.
Aaron Pound: The really sad thing here is that McCarty is not acting like someone who was threatened, or who is protecting people who might be threatened.
He’s acting like someone who was bought, and went along with corruption willingly. He’s acting like someone who is angry that people are noticing that he acted improperly, and is scared his willing complicity will be revealed.
This is exactly what happened.
People need to stop reaching for excuses that would support the “poor victimized martyr” explanation that the Hugo Admin is trying to cultivate. The Hugo Admin arrogantly believes himself to be a God, and chose to reap the free vacations and lavish gifts in exchange for promoting the con bid and rigging the Hugos so as to comply with the Chinese government’s policies.
I am convinced that he meant to doctor the stats properly so that everything looked correct if slightly suspicious — but, true to his long-time modus operandi, he procrastinated too long and ran out of time for massaging the numbers.
He thought he could get away with pulling a fast one here. But true to form, he half-assed it again, and now he’s trying evade the shitstorm he created.
So is the deal that maybe the Chengdu ConComm got a lot of cash and other nice perks in exchange for giving their benefactor some kind of say over the awards?
I’m not sure what more McCarty could do to demonstrate that he’s an arrogant, dishonest prat who shouldn’t be allowed within 1000 miles of WSFS or Worldcon, but there’s always tomorrow.
Tammy Coxen on Fabebook:
If Dave is trying to protect the con or other people from the truth getting out, the right way to do it is fall on his sword. Say “I screwed up. The works should not have been disqualified. It was not the Chinese Government. It was me. I was jet-lagged, or drunk on rice wine, etc. I am sorry, it is too late to change the results. The awards have been given out. The ballots have been destroyed. All we have is the numbers that we released.” It would effectively end his chances to take a convention leadership role ever again, but he’s already doing that to himself.
Dave McCarthy is someone who never, ever should have any Hugo-related responsibilities.
What I can’t understand is why.
Here is someone who cares about fandom. Lying would have been easy (and faster). Trashing one’s fannish reputation — Dave will never be given significant responsibility in fandom again, and may disappear from it altogether, as René Walling did — is an extreme. He’s not a stupid guy, he knows how fandom is and works. He knows these numbers and comments would engender a lot more controversy than fake ones. So why?
No, I don’t think “bought” is an answer, because who benefits? Sure, politics answers some questions, but not all. It’s just unfathomable.
@Gary Farber
I think this is the assumption that a lot of people jumped to, pretty much immediately. And it certainly seems to be where opinion is coalescing. I think McCarty’s deliberate muddying of those waters is the only thing that has allowed any alternative narratives to be entertained.
But I also don’t think Fandom is going to accept that Chinese censorship should apply to a worldwide award, regardless of where the event was held. If McCarty came out and admitted it, I suspect it would basically guarantee a do-over in the next year or two. Which seems to be where a lot of the discussion is trending anyways
Does Chinese self-censorship work in such a way that it is okay to mention works and individuals who are politically unacceptable, yet not okay to say that those works and individuals are politically unacceptable?
Ryan H: I also don’t think Fandom is going to accept that Chinese censorship should apply to a worldwide award
Dave McCarty and Ben Yalow shouldn’t have accepted it, either. When promoting the Chengdu bid, they repeatedly assured WSFS members that they would be able to run the Hugo Awards with integrity and without Chinese interference.
The moment that they realized they were not going to be able to run the Hugo Award without kowtowing to Chinese laws, Yalow and McCarty needed to invoke Section 2.6, declare incapacity of the Chengdu Worldcon committee, and ask Glasgow to take over the 2023 Hugo Awards.
But then they would have had to give up all those sweet, sweet vacation trips, and those sweet, sweet lavish gifts they received from the Chinese. So instead, they have done incalculable damage to the Hugo Awards in exchange for their own personal gain.
Ryan H: it would basically guarantee a do-over in the next year or two
Unfortunately, a do-over isn’t feasible. We can’t take Hugos away from the people who won them, that would be savagely cruel.
The best we can hope for is that Glasgow gives Special Worldcon Awards to Babel, Sandman, Paul Weimer, and Xiran Jay Zhao to give them a small measure of the recognition of which they were so wrongly deprived. Furthermore, I hope that Glasgow’s Hugo Admin will rule in advance of nominations that Xiran Jay Zhao gets another year of eligibility for the Astounding Award.
On the weekend, I remember, Kevin Standlee pointed several times at John Scalzi’s “What if we didn’t?” post as a warning of unwanted consequences, in response to various proposed calls to action. It looks like McCarty beat all the rest of us to it and is now living out the “What if we didn’t?” adventure. And since it’s apparently impossible for the central organization or any part of it to do anything they’d rather not…darn it, I wanted to be a vandal of great traditions too! But others are using it all up.
JJ said
How about a related work special award?
In no way whatsoever am I advocating “accepting” what happened.
I’m simply expressing my opinion as to the dynamic at play here that explains what’s going on. I don’t know that I’m right. I could be wrong.
But for now, what I said is my assumption.
Mostly, though, I think the most important thing to focus on is what we can do to prevent this sort of thing in the future.
Ed Green: How about a related work special award?
Best Theft Of Hugo Awards
Someone else suggested we should all nominate “2023 Hugo Statistics” for “Best Short Story” — and then when it gets onto the ballot, No Award it.
A useful link: Online fan communities in China carry out their own form of self-censorship
Longer.
How it works on people and organizations outside China.
Probably everything has been said, but not yet by me, so here we go:
I think its quite likely that McCarty decided that Kuang would be too much of a hassle to invite to China and voided the votes. I also think its likely that the other wrong (or some of them) were genuine blunders, as tkingfisher suggests (this seems likely in the case of Sandman at least, with Paul Weimer I really dont know), were the ilelgiblity ruling offered a welcome possibility to not have to admit anything. In either case chinese government wouldnt have needed direct control. I think its also likely that McCarty hoped the pressure to release the numbers would simply go away, but shyed away to commit freud, of not giving the affected a case.
In any case, the question for me that is nearly more important is : What now?
JJ said:
I dont know if possible, but I think it would be the best cause of just putting them on the ballott with whomever it makes this year. Yes, there would be the risk of “revenge voting”, but I think overall that may be a fair outcome.
Pingback: Hugo Awards in a quagmire following contentious exclusions in released report -
The Chinese members of the concom and Hugo committee are the ones facing serious risks. The right thing to do, to avoid endangering them, would be to say, “See the official statement. No further comment.” Pretending there was no Chinese interference and that the ineligibility has been fully explained is barefaced dishonesty.
Have any Hugo recipients returned their awards? I hope they will.
Can we envision a scenario where winners keeping their awards and running a do-over are mutually compatible? I don’t want to take awards away from any of the winners either, they are all immensely deserving for their wonderful work regardless of the corrupt process. But I do think a fair process is needed.
Peer said:
That roar of horror you heard in the distance are the people who currently administer the Hugo Awards. Just put them on the ballot? Good God, we have rules! Rules we can’t point to at the moment, but rules, dammit! *
I have a bet with myself on who will be the first to post “Well, actualy…” because, well, there’s a reason the usual suspects are the usual suspects.
At present, based on what’s public: a) there’s no evidence of Chinese government interference and b) that wouldn’t make much logical sense.
I would be inclined to trust Dave McCarty if it were just the issue of a work being ineligible. It is the thankless job of Hugo administrators to rule on eligibility. Dave has a demonstrated commitment to WSFS and would do everything humanly possible not to screw it up.
But apparently inaccurate EPH calculations is a violation of the WSFS constition. [As I was typing this, I see there is further discussion on the other thread re not impossible but still clearly not organic ballots, so let me edit to note that.]
I’m prepared to believe there were good-faith reasons for how some of the mess got started. (For example, McCarty mentioned font problems with how some Chinese nominees were written, which could easily have interfered with EPH calculations.) I would find it very hard to believe that the administrators spent months rerunning EPH in a vain attempt to create plausible looking ballot data that fits a predetermined outcome. But that’s basically what it looks like. The only silver lining I could imagine is that perhaps there aren’t really that many people who believe Legends & Lattes is the Best SFF Novel of the year.
On Metafilter, someone proposed nominating the 2023 Hugo Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
@Lisa Hertel:
René isn’t entirely gone, though I don’t know if he attends many cons outside of the Montreal area anymore. (I’m in Toronto, and there’s a lot of overlap between Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, so I’ve seen him around.)
Ed Green said
Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.
Ed Green wrote:
Well, actually, you’re right about there begin rules, but wrong about them being not pointable. One of the rules is that “works are eligible if they were published in the calendar year preceding the year in which the vote takes place”, and it’s listed here.
And we have a surprise winner in the “We’ll, actually…” contest.
I am aware of the rules. Not everyone gets my sense of humor, and they certainly aren’t required to do so.
So I have, after reading over Marshall and Jameson’s excellent math posts, combined with one thing that niggled at me from Dave’s statements, come to a theory based, as Jeeves would say, on the psychology of the individual.
Censorship-schmensorship. This was a math screw up. Somebody—possibly/probably not Dave, did the actual number crunching and did it wrong. Maybe they didn’t understand EPH, maybe they were trying to insert their own favorite work (one of the entries is weird and obscure and makes no sense) but they absolutely made a hash of it, kept trying to correct it but couldn’t, and meanwhile the release date gets pushed out farther and farther, fandom is restless, and finally they just hand in what they think looks right. Dave doesn’t check it—for all we know, it was in Chinese and he couldn’t, and that is as generous as I’m gonna be about it—and releases it ASAP.
Then let’s say Dave finally looks at the math and is all “oh shit” because it just Does Not Work. At this point, many people would fall on their sword and say “we screwed up, we’re sorry, here’s the adjusted nominee list.” But it’s Dave. Instead he goes into damage control and chops everyone who should have made the ballot but didn’t as ineligible, drags his feet about releasing the numbers, tells the rest of the administrators that their official line is the rules are the rules, and then tries to bluster his way through it by being an ass on Facebook, because he knows nobody can check his work.
Did this happen? I dunno, but A) never assign to malice but what can be assigned to incompetence and B) it would nicely explain that weird line in his post about some other people in other years knowing why he did it. No other administrators would know anything about government censorship, but I’ll bet you a dollar some of them know all about math errors.
RedWombat: Did this happen?
No. McCarty was the one who ran EPH to determine the finalists, he was the one who made the so-called “ineligible” determinations, and he was the one who
preparedhalf-assed the report. Presumably the purpose of having a couple of Chinese members on the Hugo team was to provide advice on which things McCarty needed to exclude.RedWombat: that weird line in his post about some other people in other years knowing why he did it
That’s him trying to provide cover for himself for “following Chinese censorship laws”. At least 2 past Hugo Admins have said they have no idea what he is talking about.
Teemu Leisti :
Hm, “Cant do anythig, Its the rules!” is always a weak defence, were not talking about universal laws here!
The rules are there to make a just award possible. That hasnt worked this year. If the rules dont allow for rectifying the situation, the rules have to be amended. Its simple! (This may be the game designer in my speaking, but nothing prevents anyone to add a excemption clause. Plus if this case has told be anything is that the runners of World Con can apparently do whatever they want).
RedWombat: I’m sorry, no math screw-up can explain why Babel wasn’t a finalist. That is an omission so huge somebody would have had to check how it happened.
At best there is both defective math and censorship. And that’s at best.
Gary McGath on January 23, 2024 at 8:25 am wrote:
“Have any Hugo recipients returned their awards? I hope they will.”
As the recipient of the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer, I can readily assure you I will NOT be returning it.
First off, EXACTLY who would I return it to? The Chengdu Worldcon Committee? The sponsoring group, the Chengdu Science Fiction Society? The 2023 Hugo Award Administrators?
Speaking solely for myself, I think it would be a meaningless gesture that would be wholly without merit.
I feel terrible about my friend and peer, Paul Weimer, being declared “ineligible” without a logical or transparent explanation. But returning the award certainly wouldn’t give him any more clarity than he has today.
The very best thing I can do is keep up the chorus of outrage for Paul and all of the others who have been wronged and offer constructive changes to the WSFS Constitution to ensure that this situation NEVER happens again.
My Hugo Award will become a treasured family heirloom. But as long as I live, its presence will be a constant reminder that sff fans, writers, editors and artists in the People’s Republic of China are not totally free to express themselves.
Chris M. Barkley
I don’t so much think the math caused Babel not to be eligible as “in order for the math to work, something has to go” and Babel got picked, quite possibly because he thought it would potentially be a problem.
If Dave ran EPH, though, then a good chunk of my theory goes to pieces, though I’d say it’s pretty clear he screwed up wholesale.
Ah, well. It was a nice thought.
(I thought the purpose of the Chinese members of the committee would be to read the ballots that came in in Chinese? Or did they have to be in English?)
ETA: Hang on, if Dave really did the number crunching, why did he say that the one C&P error was a result of going back and forth with the Chinese version? How would that have occurred in English?
Brian Z. McCarty mentioned font problems with how some Chinese nominees were written, which could easily have interfered with EPH calculations.
It probably made normalization of the data — when slightly different title or author spellings are manually resolved to ensure that all nominations for the same thing are counted in one single bucket — more difficult.
But EPH is never run until after that normalization is first performed. And titles and fonts are absolutely irrelevant in EPH calculations.
Brian Z. I would find it very hard to believe that the administrators spent months rerunning EPH in a vain attempt to create plausible looking ballot data that fits a predetermined outcome.
They didn’t re-run EPH. What we’re looking at is a half-assed manual attempt to massage the numbers to support the way the finalists were chosen, that failed badly because the person doing the doctoring procrastinated and then ran out of time.
Brian Z. Dave has a demonstrated commitment to WSFS and would do everything humanly possible not to screw it up.
You’re really not familiar with the long history of his career in Worldcon, are you?
Granted that I think Dave’s in charge of getting the trophies mailed out, and that none of us who didn’t attend have gotten theirs yet, it may be largely moot.
Pingback: Hugo Awards In A Quagmire Following Contentious Exclusions In Released Report - Digital Mediaverse
Serious risks are for people who threaten the power of the government. People who become minor embarrassments, lose status and possibly get a pants-wetting but non-injurious talking to from the cops.
Those people would also be adults who knew what they were doing.
A question about EPH:
Is there good software available to a Hugo committee that does the calculations? Takes a list of nomination ballots as input, delivers the nicely formatted ranked longlist?
Or does the next Worldcon have to invent the wheel for themselves?
In the latter case I can imagine a lot more genuine math errors than in the first.
@GiantPanda: There is EPH software which has been used by Hugo administrators. See the discussion in the comments at this thread.
As a finalist for last year’s Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer, I echo what Chris M. Barkley said in response to Gary McGath. No winner should be shamed or pressured to return their Hugo. All of last year’s Hugo Award winners created amazing works that were very worthy of being honored.
Instead of meaningless gestures, the SF/F genre must ensure this never happens again. In particular, this means updating the WSFS Constitution as Chris mentioned.
Another EPH question—has Dave McCarty ever administered EPH before? ( I know less about his precise history of being an administrator and more about the people swearing they will eat broken glass before working with him again.)
“Serious risks are for people who threaten the power of the government. People who become minor embarrassments, lose status and possibly get a pants-wetting but non-injurious talking to from the cops.”
You are kidding right? PLEASE READ upon news about China.
Go ahead and imagine someone on the Hugo stage mentions, Chang Kai Shek, no, not Uighur, not Hong Kong Democracy, but a name that most American don’t even know about.
Or talk about Disney’s Pooh bear in length.
Or about the Opium War
It would be adorable that people are so innocent if not for lives involved.
RedWombat: Another EPH question—has Dave McCarty ever administered EPH before?
Yes, in 2018. (He was also Admin in 2014 and 2016, before EPH.)
Camestros Felapton, presciently, in 2022:
“I don’t believe fraud or voter manipulation has ever been a credible issue but if it were then EPH also makes it harder and more complex for somebody to fabricate voting statistics.”
Iphinome on January 23, 2024 at 10:21 am said:
I am certainly not about to suggest there was no interference (Overt or otherwise) by the Government. Nor do I approve the implicit censorship here.
That is, however, a bit much.
What, is the opening ceremony supposed to be a group performance of “Do You Hear The People Sing”?
And not every “adult” thinks their hobby is going to get them a chance to catch a noodle in the back of their head.
It is easy to type that sort of thing miles and miles away from where it is happening. Harder to actually be there and do it.
@BrianZ The only silver lining I could imagine is that perhaps there aren’t really that many people who believe Legends & Lattes is the Best SFF Novel of the year.
Um, Brian? Legends and Lattes didn’t win Best Novel. Nettle and Bone did. Travis Baldree DID with the Astounding Award, but that’s an entirely different thing.
The Astounding Award is different, and I am still very curious what sort of arrangement Dell, WSFS, and Worldcon have (and to what extent Dell could exercise a complaint or take other action).
The WSFS has no authority at all over the Astounding Award, which is adminstrated on behalf of the sponsor Dell Magazine’s. I would suggest it might be in Dell Magazine’s best interests to end the arrangement for cause in order to protect their trademark.