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.
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The folks at Dell have no interest in running the award themselves (again, based on my past experince as Hugo Admin)–it takes resources they don’t have readily available.
They just want to be told who the award is going to.
A foul-up with the award administration isn’t going to affect their trademark.
Just checked, and yes, Penny Publishing, Dell’s parent company, still holds the active “Astounding” trademark that is used to sponsor the award. https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=74389309&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch
Does Dell (or Penny) have a formal licensing agreement? I was surprised to learn there apparently isn’t one for the Hugos, so I wondered if the Astounding was a more formalized matter.
@John Lorentz
Since winning the Astounding Award encourages publishers to print “Astounding Award Winning Author” on the books, and Penny Publishing own a trademark for the use of “Astounding” in the publication of science fiction books… I suggest it very much does affect the “good will” of their Trademark, could cause them to have to chase around protesting against use of the mark on published books, and they might well want to end the association because of it.
Is there a formal agreement between Dell (or Penny) and the Worldcon-org-in-question to use the name? (I’d have assumed yes, but given that there apparently really isn’t for the Hugo…)
I feel fairly certain excluding Sandman is no accident, since Neil co-signed a letter in 2015 asking the Chinese government to release jailed authors.
Hey, speaking of EPH numbers, I’ve got some more oddities.
So, every ballot gets five nominees. EPH means One Ballot=One Point, which then can be divided between five nominees. Which means, for any nominee, if you divide the number of nominations by it’s EPH number, you get a number between 1 and 5. A one means, at that point in the EPH pass it’s the only nominee remaining on any ballots it appears on. A five means on every ballot it appears on A. nominated in all five slots and B. all five of those nominees are still in the running.
Which means an EPH Ratio even CLOSE to five is pretty unlikely, right? ESPECIALLY by the finalist round.
With Babel, the EPH ratio stays the same because its EPH number oddly never wavers, is 4.91.
Even stranger, for Worldbuilding for Masochists in Fancast (full disclosure, this is my podcast), it’s 4.95.
That sounds pretty impossible, yes?
Wanna know what else?
Since Fancast is dealing with lower numbers, if there was even one– JUST ONE– ballot that nominated WFM and noting else, and we recalculate the ratio take that ballot into account (subtracting one from both the EPH number and the total nominations), then the ratio hits 5.39.
Which is, of course, impossible.
And yet, I know for a fact that such a ballot exists.
These numbers are falsified. I don’t know who falsified them at what stage and with what motivation, but they are.
(Sorry for the essentially duplicated comments. I shall rail at this WordPress site, rather than my own.)
My thoughts ran along lines similar to Jay’s, especially since one of the blatant irregularities is on the Astounding ballot. And that since there’s a limit to the actions WSFS could take to disown this, it’s one avenue for a legally responsible body to say “nope, shenanigans” and either send a message by disallowing the use of the name or applying pressure to avoid this sort of situation in the future.
@Jay Blanc
But it looks like that trademark only applies to a series of books/trading cards…so maybe not applicable to the award? I dunno, IANAL.
I chose not to nominate or vote in the Hugo Awards administered by the Chengdu Worldcon. I had originally planned to keep my long streak of participation going, but all of the problems in the run up to the con were too much for me. I lost faith that even the Hugos would be handled properly and I wasn’t comfortable sending the con money.
Even at my most cynical I didn’t expect it to be this bad. Dave McCarty’s refusal to explain why nominees are ineligible is an admission they were eligible. The Hugo administrators have corrupted the ballot and completely discredited the 2023 awards. It has never been acceptable practice for a nominee to be excluded without the reason being provided.
I don’t see any way to correct this, but I hope as WSFS members we will find a way to ensure that repressive countries like China can’t get another Worldcon simply by winning a site selection vote of dubious legitimacy. Otherwise we’ll keep seeing these kinds of problems in the future.
I’d like to see a WSFS constitutional amendment to list the countries where a future Worldcon can be held, with the starting list as every past host country but China (excluded due to Chengdu’s spectacular failure to live up to its obligations and the corruption of the Hugo Awards). Prospective site bidders in other countries can go through the multi-year process of changing the constitution to add their country, then submit a bid only after that succeeded.
I know Tammy Coxxen wants to kill NASFiC. Now comes the reaper’s scythe for Worldcon! She has an exceptionally pessimistic outlook about institutions of fandom we’ve managed to keep alive for 49 and 85 years, respectively. Let’s not count them out just yet.
@A. P. Howell
Publishers of authors who have won the Astounding Award like to put “Winner of the Astounding Award” on their books.
@rcade: Excoriating Dave McCarty on the way to concluding that China must never host a Worldcon is…not a good look.
(And assuming that political realities within countries will not change over time is laughable, but more in a sweet summer child sort of way.)
I haven’t seen it mentioned over here. Nibedita Sen over at BlueSky found the smoking gun.
https://bsky.app/profile/hernibsen.bsky.social/post/3kjoa2h2igc27
(in case embed fails)
People need to understand how China works. Read the linked articles I posted, please!
China trains its people to self-censor as regards a gazillion taboo ideas, references, historical moments, themes, and so on.
I will be extremely surprised if what’s happened does not turn out to be that some element of the dropped works were thought by someone to touch a taboo, and thus the usual is done of disappearing the taboo reference so as to avoid any possibility of bringing down any kind of investigation or punishment.
Always better safe than sorry.
THIS IS HOW CHINA WORKS. I can’t imagine why anyone would think the Hugo Awards were somehow immune, unlike everything else published anywhere in China, including anywhere on the Chinese internet.
If Dave McCarty, who last I looked hates me, so I have zero reason to say anything that might seem as if it’s defending him, rather than putting forward a theory of what happened, just made “a mistake,” the rest of the Western concom members wouldn’t go into robot-like lockstep to protect him.
The only logical explanation I see is that China operated in bog-standard, absolutely predictable, fashion here, just like every other bit of writing or reference made public in China is SELF-censored as a protective measure.
No police or government are directly involved. The point is to AVOID that kind of attention, which is apt to wind up with you in jail, or worse, for a significant amount of time, possibly for years.
Meanwhile, none of the Western members of the concom wish to endanger their Chinese friends who will all remain living in China and subject to Chinese investigation and punishment in any number of possible ways.
Just effing ask anyone who lives in China if I’m being accurate in my account here. Or ask any scholar of China. Or do the reading yourself, he said to no one in particular.
To repeat one link: Online fan communities in China carry out their own form of self-censorship
Read the rest! Google “self-censorship in China.”
Is it just a theory that this is what happened with the Hugos? Yes, it’s only a theory. But I think it’s a theory based on known facts and Ockham’s Razor applies.
If I turn out to be wrong, I turn out to be wrong. It happens.
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rcade on January 23, 2024 at 2:04 pm said:
That is the first suggestion that I’ve seen on this subject that (1) Can be handled technically by the administrator the same way they deal with the other bid documents, (2) Doesn’t require the administrator to make a subjective judgement about the suitability of the site, and (3) Doesn’t accidentally disqualify locations unintentionally (because ratings about freedom, democracy, etc. might disqualify the USA, although I know that there are many people would cheer that as an unalloyed good thing).
Do you to intend to propose such a amendment in Glasgow?
Taking another look at the traffic wreck comments to Dave’s post, I see a writer for Esquire asking for quotes, suggesting the story is gaining mainstream attention.
Meanwhile, Nibedita Sen found http://en.chengduworldcon.com/uploads/ueditor/file/20230716/1689496957748209.pdf which includes this passage:
@Gary Farber –
One of the many, many concerns about a Chengdu Worldcon was this. It was certainly one of mine. It might seem that this is being ignored when it’s more like a well, yeah shrug. And there were and continue to be shenanigans, plus gaslighting and other forms of nonsense in a community that is well known for not appreciating any of that.
I mean, I personally am going with incompetence and malice aforethought, with a nod to a cultural propensity to self censor.
@Madame Hardy: I flagged that when the PR was released. Wasn’t quite sure what exactly to make of at it at the time given that there wasn’t any other hard evidence yet that there were, uh, problems with the finalist list that we had.
@Kevin Standlee:
In case anyone is unclear on why the Chengdu site selection kerfuffle was called racist? This type of thing is why.
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I didn’t say China could never host one. I excluded it from the initial list of countries allowed to host one, expecting countries to be added or removed by future WSFS amendments. This process also accounts for the possibility of changing political realities you thought me too much of an ingenue to consider.
@Goobergunch, ouch.
Last para of Kevin Standlee’s response to you:
So there was already a “whoops, nothing we can do about this” approach.
I’d like to see how the idea fares with long-timers in the WSFS community who have done a lot for Worldcon before making that decision. Particularly people who’ve gotten things passed at Business Meetings.
He is acknowledging that as Americans we might want to tap the brakes on the idea that we are still acing all of our freedom and democracy tests.
You’re clearly offended but it would be helpful if you explained your reasoning instead of mic dropping these little truth bombs on us. I have no idea what you meant by saying I’ve inappropriately excoriated Dave McCarty — given your own comments about him in this discussion — and now you’re calling someone racist.
@ Kevin Standlee
As far as what happened to the Hugo Awards in 2023, your attitude seems to be “so it goes.” Is that fair?
@rcade:
Okay, so if a fascist takes the White House later this year, the U.S. can be removed from the Worldcon whitelist in…how many years? I remain unconvinced of your seriousness or good intentions.
Proposing an amendment that sums to “No country that hasn’t previously run a Worldcon will ever get to, unless we spend two years or more debating if they are worthy.” may have unintended consequences, and cause some bad press and tarnished reputation.
The root problem isn’t that a Worldcon was held in China. The problem was that the WSFS functions that are held at Worldcon are fundamentally incompatible with the local norms, standards and laws of China. Censorship of the ballot was inevitable, and there should have been prior recognition of this incapacity. What should have happened was the recognition that censorship of the Hugos in some form would occur, and WSFS membership should have been balloted on if this incapacity meant the Hugos should be administrated by the next Worldcon. But it wasn’t, because the people who interpret the WSFS constitution had unilaterally decided the incapacity clause had a different meaning than its actual text.
@rcade:
You’ve appropriately excoriated him, IMHO. But saying “a U.S. [I assume] conrunner did a terrible job!” results in the natural consequence of “China shouldn’t host Worldcons” is highly irrational and, yes, racist as hell.
So is the idea that U.S. host sites should never be excluded.
(For the record: if I’d been voting for site selection, there is no way I would’ve voted for a site in China. I’m aware of the very wide range of very serious political issues in the country, even leaving aside that little issue of genocide. I think it’d be a good idea to put those sorts of factors on an exclusion list. But I also think places that, say, forbid trans people from peeing should end up on an exclusion list based on those policies. Given Kevin Standlee’s DW post on the subject, I’m frankly shocked that he’s now apparently forgotten his concern about human rights issues within the U.S. and endorsing–or at least, not shooting down as deeply distasteful and ineffective–a proposal to judge sites based on anything other than political policies and how they might impact the event and attendees.)
@A.P. Howell: If (a) China expects self-censorship so as to disqualify nominees for the Hugo Awards if they are perceived as not congenial to the Chinese government, and (b) Dave McCarty, as a Hugo administrator from the U.S., gave in to the self-censorship expectation and refuses to admit that he did so …
then it seems perfectly reasonable to say both that (a) China should never host a Worldcon again (at least as long as it remains a dictatorship) and (b) Dave McCarty should never be involved in administering the Hugos again.
I need to append “the rules we must follow” to more of my statements.
“I’m going to get a glass of water now, according to the rules we must follow.”
“What rules?”
“The rules we must follow.”
“Which rules are those?”
“The rules I listed.”
“Which rules are those?”
“The rules we must follow.”
“I’m going to the bathroom now, according to the rules we must follow.”
“OK, fine, I’ll be outside, according to the rules we must follow.”
“Cool, it’s been great seeing you according to the rules we must follow. Let’s get together again next week, according to the rules we must follow.”
TOGETHER, CHANTING: “YES. ACCORDING TO THE RULES WE MUST FOLLOW. YOU ARE NOT OF THE BODY. YOU WILL BE ABSORBED. BY THE RULES WE MUST FOLLOW.
LANDRU, HELP US!”
“By the rules we must follow” is what we should greet everyone we meet with, and when we part, we must intone “by the rules we must follow” together, and then bow.
And so it shall be. By the rules we must follow.
So mote (in God’s Eye) it be.
Gary, that’s now earworming me with Bowie’s song in Labyrinth:
You remind me of the babe.
What babe?
The babe with the power.
What power?
The power of voodoo.
Who do?
You do!
Do what?
Remind me of the babe!
Either that, or maybe it’s an elaborate Abbott & Costello routine: Which rules? Third base!
@Joshua K: And yet the discussion is entirely “How do we exclude China from hosting future Worldcons?” and not “How do we exclude Dave McCarty from involvement in future Worldcons?”
Arguably, Dave’s having left all the Rabid Puppy stuff on the final ballot in 2016 (which is what I thought at the time was the right thing for him to do) is evidence that he wouldn’t have put up with censorship by the Chinese government either.
No, we are talking about the nomination stage, where a large number of people somehow simultaneously pretended they thought it was the greatest genre work written all year. I mean, perhaps this isn’t the right moment to dredge up those issues, so I hesitate to launch a rant… but I can see how someone affiliated with a Chinese publisher, wishing to sneakily nudge the ballot in some direction they liked to see it go in, need look no farther than certain American publishers to get the idea that doing that kind of thing is considered completely kosher. IMHO, we still need to up our own game quite a bit as we go pointing fingers at China. In my opinion.
But to what extent this ballot was gamed, to what extent it was blatantly tampered with, and to what extent various parties want obfuscate what was done, is a mystery. It looks like all of the above.
@A. P. Howell
That is very much a misrepresentation of the discussion all around. There is some of the former, and more of the latter.
Both should happen.
@Lis Riba
🙂
@Kalin Stacey: Sorry about that. I may have missed some talk about mechanisms to remove admins or overly prioritized the more recent “how to write an anti-China amendment” stuff.
Short of the future Hugo Administrative teams losing their memories, their minds or becoming even more massively tone deaf, regardless of why this happen, you think anyone is going to let Dave anywhere near Hugo Administration?
They’ll toss him under the bus. If they haven’t already.
I tried sharing the next-step suggestions from Abigail Nussbaum’s post about it earlier but the site kept crashing on me. I think they’re all worth pursuing:
Lis Riba: Cary Grant and Shirley Temple did an earlier version of that as “You remind me of a man” in The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer.
@Kalin Stacey: Yay, you have defeated WordPress! Thanks for sharing the link and suggestions.
I can’t think of a mechanism in the existing WSFS Constitution to enable that kind of ad hoc ballot measure to be held and to dictate policy.
If our solution to what happened in China is to trust the people who interpret the constitution to take action, isn’t that undercut by what happened in China? We trusted Dave McCarty.
I see Popehat has entered the conversation. Bluesky thread starts here: https://bsky.app/profile/kenwhite.bsky.social/post/3kjosxwlhg424
Not only that, but Popehat (Ken White) is apparently gonna talk about it on a podcast.
Let’s say the absolute monarchy of Latveria makes a Worldcon bid and invites past conrunners and Hugo administrators from the West on a lavish junket to the potential convention city Doomstadt. It then wins a site selection vote because thousands of doombots participate and can’t be excluded in spite of scant address information. Some of those Western SMOFS join the committee. Do you think we can be assured that Doomcon 1 won’t put McCarty or someone else from the Chengdu Hugo team in charge?
Even if they don’t, any repressive country could foreseeably object to some nominees and nominated works. Even the most trusted Hugo administrator could be forced to toe the line, either out of concern for themselves or the Latverian fans who are working with them to put on the event.
Let’s say the absolute monarchy of Latveria makes a Worldcon bid
That does it!
I’m now proposing
Fredonia in ’28!
No less crazy than the current clown show, but at least it’ll be funny.
a) The nomination process was a disaster. I was unable to nominate at all. I never got the token, and I never got any response whatever from a number of emails to the address they gave.
b) Voting online for the WSFS business meeting. Yeah, I shoved that at Moshe in Chicago, and his response was “what, you want a thousand people to attend the business meeting?”
There were 88 of us the session I was at. I pointed out that dealers COULD NOT LEAVE THEIR TABLE – Bill Roper really wanted to vote on one issue, the one I did vote on, but no, he could not afford to leave his table for hours. If the example of WSFS membership is professional organizations, they allow various kinds of remote voting. If I paid for it, but can’t attend, then that REFUSES to allow me to vote at the business meeting. Do I get half of the WSFS membership fee back?
@Mazianni
The comments in that thread are interesting, though a lot of people clearly haven’t spent much time around Worldcons. Or fandom.
Instead of saying “China can’t have a Worldcon unless their government changes,” we should look at a more general statement along the lines of:
Dictatorships or governments that restrict the freedoms of their citizens or people who visit their country, shall not be eligible for hosting a Worldcon. Worldcon attendees expect the ability to love who they want to, practice a religion or not of their choosing, or wear the clothing of their choosing without endangering their lives. Women shall not have their freedom of movement restricted by the proposed host country. If the proposed host country restricts women’s ability for free movement by requiring that a man escort them everywhere, that country shall not be eligible to host a Worldcon.
This way, you state what the restrictions are for hosting a Worldcon without being – presumably – racist. It also allows for a country changing its policies being allowed to be considered. All this without having to maintain a list which can get bogged down in politics and long delays.