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Science fiction authors were excluded from awards for fear of offending China
- alexnewman 3y agoI say we double lean into censorship until it becomes so painfully hilarious as to backfire. It’s not like the people of China are stupid or naive .
- anon-sre-srm 3y agoGet your Fahrenheit 451 flamethrowers warmed up.
- fennecfoxy 3y agoDon't look up!
- mac-attack 3y agoWoof. Flashes of the climate summit week in Saudi.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoWhy not just hold it elsewhere?
- a_gnostic 3y agoTo not offend China.
- ishanmahapatra 3y agoThe location is voted on by fans at the WorldCon held two years earlier.
- duxup 3y agoProbably time to limit the list to "more free" countries.
- shagie 3y agoSibling comment to yours linked http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon-in-the-news.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39141533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39141533 - 144 points by cstross 21 days ago | 56 comments ) ... which has in it: > The fallout from Chengdu has probably sunk several other future worldcon bids—and it's not as if there are a lot of teams competing for the privilege of working themselves to death: Glasgow and Seattle (2024 and 2025) both won their bidding by default because they had experienced, existing worldcon teams and nobody else could be bothered turning up. So the Ugandan worldcon bid has collapsed (and good riddance, many fans would vote NO WORLDCON in preference to a worldcon in a nation that recently passed a law making homosexuality a capital offense). The Saudi Arabian bid also withered on the vine, but took longer to finally die. They shifted their venue to Cairo in a desperate attempt to overcome Prince Bone-saw's negative PR optics, but it hit the buffers when the Egyptian authorities refused to give them the necessary permits. Then there's the Tel Aviv bid. Tel Aviv fans are lovely people, but I can't see an Israeli worldcon being possible in the foreseeable future (too many genocide cooties right now). Don't ask about Kiev (before February 2022 they were considering bidding for the Eurocon). And in the USA, the prognosis for successful Texas and Florida worldcon bids are poor (book banning does not go down well with SF fans). > Beyond Seattle in 2025, the sole bid standing for 2026 (now the Saudi bid has died) is Los Angeles. Tel Aviv is still bidding for 2027, but fat chance: Uganda is/was targeting 2028, and there was some talk of a Texas bid in 2029 (all these are speculative bids and highly unlikely to happen in my opinion). I am also aware of a bid for a second Dublin worldcon (they've got a shiny new conference centre), targeting 2029 or 2030. There may be another Glasgow or London bid in the mid-30s, too. But other than that? I'm too out of touch with current worldcon politics to say, other than, watch this space (but don't buy the popcorn from the concession stand, it's burned and bitter).
- egypturnash 3y agoAnd by anyone who buys a “supporting membership”. Which also gives you the rights to vote on the Hugos in the year your membership is for. If you have a pile of money and the desire to do so it is thus trivial to fix the Hugos for any given year and put a future worldcon anywhere you want.
- starkparker 3y agoContext from Charlie Stross: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon-in-the-news.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon... > SF fandom is a growing community thing in China. And even a small regional SF convention in China is quite gigantic by most western (trivially, US/UK) standards. > My understanding is that a bunch of Chinese fans who ran a successful regional convention in Chengdu (population 21 million; slightly more than the New York metropolitan area, about 30% more than London and suburbs) heard about the worldcon and thought "wouldn't it be great if we could call ourselves the world science fiction convention?" > They put together a bid, then got a bunch of their regulars to cough up $50 each to buy a supporting membership in the 2021 worldcon and vote in site selection. It doesn't take that many people to "buy" a worldcon—I seem to recall it's on the order of 500-700 votes—so they bought themselves the right to run the worldcon in 2023. And that's when the fun and games started. ... > It needs a WSFS constitutional amendment at least (so pay attention to the motions and voting in Glasgow, and then next year, in Seattle) just to stop it happening again. And nobody has ever tried to retroactively invalidate the Hugo awards. While there's a mechanism for running Hugo voting and handing out awards for a year in which there was no worldcon (the Retrospective Hugo awards—for example, the 1945 Hugo Awards were voted on in 2020—nobody considered the need to re-run the Hugos for a year in which the vote was rigged. So there's no mechanism.
- pseudolus 3y agoA more detailed report: https://www.patreon.com/posts/98498779 https://www.patreon.com/posts/98498779
- Sniffnoy 3y agoAlso at https://file770.com/the-2023-hugo-awards-a-report-on-censorship-and-exclusion/ https://file770.com/the-2023-hugo-awards-a-report-on-censors...
- themacguffinman 3y agoThis time it didn't seem to work out well for the organizers. The organization behind the Hugo Awards "Worldcon Intellectual Property" announced resignations and censures in response to this: > Dave McCarty has resigned as a Director of W.I.P. > Kevin Standlee has resigned as Chair of the W.I.P. Board of Directors (BoD). > Dave McCarty – censured for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over. > Chen Shi – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over. > Kevin Standlee – reprimanded for public comments that mistakenly led people to believe that we are not servicing our marks. > Ben Yalow – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over. From https://www.wsfs.org/2024/01/31/announcements-from-worldcon-intellectual-property/ https://www.wsfs.org/2024/01/31/announcements-from-worldcon-...
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoGlad to see this, but then I have to wonder why the organization decided to have the event in China in the first place?
- rmrf100 3y agoBecause the world should NOT be splited more and more.
- ngcc_hk 3y agoLet us do it in Russia or here communist china. It is not you or split it up guys or ladies. It is one side attack the basic and foundation values of you. How about North Korea, Iran or even Hong Kong … just happen all on USA adversity list …
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoThree Body Problem isn't good enough to legitimately win a Hugo. There's clearly money lining pockets to promote their culture and political cant.
- hunglee2 3y ago"Some books, like Kuang’s “Babel” — which won the 2023 British Book Award for Fiction — appear to have been excluded simply for taking place in China" In Western media, anti-China prejudice can be turned into more anti-China prejudice by simple reframing.
- AbrahamParangi 3y agoSomething amusing about “anti-China prejudice” is that generally speaking most countries don’t especially care if you badmouth them. Can you imagine Americans up in arms that someone in China doesn’t like or respect America? And don’t scour the internet to find outlier examples, any reasonable person well acquainted with American culture knows the answer.
- NikkiA 3y ago> Can you imagine Americans up in arms that someone in China doesn’t like or respect America? Easily, yes.
- aurareturn 3y agoCan you imagine Americans up in arms that someone in China doesn’t like or respect America? Yes. Absolutely. But in general, Americans have hate China at a personal level. The Chinese do not hate Americans at a personal level. They see the conflict as just political - not personal. The level of anti-China propaganda in the US far exceeds the level of anti-American propaganda in China in my opinion.
- throwaway2990 3y agoThere is far more anti America propaganda than anti China.
- aurareturn 3y agoNow that’s just wrong. The level of anti china propaganda in the US is magnitudes higher than anti American propaganda in China. Anyone who disagrees has never stepped inside China. Maybe not even in US.
- kevingadd 3y agoMost indications are that the people doing the censoring didn't put much effort into investigating what the actual laws and regulations were over in China, either. If you look at the emails there's a lot of 'I'm not sure whether this will be a problem'-style language, and aggressively filtering out anyone who might cause an issue based on what they imagined the law to be. It's possible they could have let all the candidates sail through and the government there wouldn't have protested, though I wouldn't be surprised if some of the candidates would indeed end up blocked.
- Vecr 3y agoThat's how all censorship regimes work. If other people didn't do most of the job for you, you'd get hopelessly backed up. Preferably the author does it themselves.
- raphlinus 3y agoIndeed, and there's a most excellent essay that goes into considerably more detail on this: https://www.exurbe.com/tools-for-thinking-about-censorship/ https://www.exurbe.com/tools-for-thinking-about-censorship/ , written partly in response to the Chengdu debacle, but also covering lots of Western examples, including Galileo vs the church, the comics code, and more.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoAre the laws vague on purpose?
- imiric 3y agoThe organizers were likely given loose instructions about topics that should be avoided, and decided to play it safe. Otherwise they would've been liable themselves.
- maxglute 3y agoTBF they did a "decent" job filtering, Zhao has youtube videos with 100,000s of views where she labels Xinjiang "genocide", Kuang graduated from Georgetown School of Foreign Policy, aka her credentials make her potential US propaganda mouthpiece. If local committee eventually got involved in censorship, they would have removed those two from nomination list. PRC nationalist (which I imagine have high overlap with scifi) love trolling PRC diasphora, especially female (especially reporters/media), who carries water for US narratives. These two are basically PRC version of sad/rabid puppies, I feel like they would have been made ineligbile at some point in the filtering process. There was no way anyone involved who did basic due diligence would have allowed either on the slate.
- excitednumber 3y agoMaybe more countries and groups can act like Australia.
- Hucklederry 3y ago?
- Vecr 3y agoProbably relating at least to the coal situation a couple years back.
- Sabinus 3y agoAustralian right-leaning government called for an independent investigation of the origins of Covid. Chinese government responded by sanctioning Australian imports for years.
- est 3y agoI've seen this narrative going arond the Interwebz for years, but in my memory China took retaliation measures before covid happened, during of Trump's trade war. > https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN287099/ https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN287099/ > Australia's ties with top trade partner China soured in 2018 when it became the first country to publicly ban China's Huawei from its 5G
- justinclift 3y agoIsn't it more that relations with China already weren't fantastic when Covid started, and the above mentioned request for an investigation just made things worse?
- fouc 3y agoInteresting, Hugo awards were held in Chengdu for 2023 and various writers were excluded > writers including Neil Gaiman, R.F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer had been deemed ineligible as finalists despite earning enough votes I'm glad the organizers for this year are tackling this issue. > In a statement on Thursday, the organizers of the 2024 Hugo Awards, which are being held in Glasgow, said they were taking steps “to ensure transparency and to attempt to redress the grievous loss of trust in the administration of the Awards.”
- isodev 3y agoJust looked up Hugo Gernsbacher, the person after whom the awards are named. He was born in Luxembourg and later moved to the US. Given his life, collective works in science fiction and technology (he owns 80 patents), I’d say the Hugo Awards are supposed to be orthogonal to notions of censorship and “what makes China happy”. - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Gernsback https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Gernsback
- ilaksh 3y ago“We were told to vet nominees for work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet, or other topics that may be an issue in China and, to my shame, I did so,” said Lacey, who did not respond to a request for comment. “I am not that naïve regarding the Chinese political system, but I wanted the Hugos to happen, and not have them completely crash and burn.” Sounds like they were scared into actually overdoing the censorship. That's pretty bad. But does anyone have a plan for rectifying the situation with authoritarianism in that part of the world that does not involve hundreds of millions of people trying to kill each other?
- Dalewyn 3y ago>But does anyone have a plan for rectifying the situation with authoritarianism in that part of the world that does not involve hundreds of millions of people trying to kill each other? Cordon off that part of the world and leave them to their devices. The old saying goes: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
- ilaksh 3y agoThat's not currently possible because all of the best devices come out of the border between that part and the rest (Taiwan). So we can't leave the devices. We need them. I think this ties into the $7 trillion Altman quest a bit. Maybe if you build enough reactors and chip fabs then the world becomes safer?
- yieldcrv 3y agoWe take those $50bn aid packages requests, and invest it into a state side semiconductor supply chain instead and then we can ignore the idea of China invading China forever. Literally 180+ countries operating with that specific level of empathy right this moment, let’s meet parity with them. Given the clamoring for semiconductors right now, a more expensive state side will sell like hotcakes. I guarantee you this won’t be seen as controversial in the world that exists after we did that. We’re going to look back at this time and think “lol what”
- wslh 3y agoThis is pure science fiction.
- Aeolun 3y agoDon’t ** hold it in China if you don’t want to censor people.
- drooopy 3y agoSeriously. What the hell is the point of holding an event that ultimately celebrates freedom of expression in a country that is now known for celebrating freedom of expression in any way shape or form?
- perihelions 3y agoThis is like Finlandization, but more farcical than tragic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization#Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization#Censorship
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoNow I want to read the books that were excluded especially “Kuang’s ‘Babel’ — which won the 2023 British Book Award for Fiction”
- rawrawrawrr 3y agoBabel is a decent sci-fi book, it's actually quite anti-capitalist. I'm not making a political statement.
- r00fus 3y agoTwo reasons to read it now
- AlotOfReading 3y agoIt's more anti-colonial than anti-capitalist, like the rest of Kuang's work. However, her works also aren't particularly friendly to the the PRC either. Babel deals with british colonialism and the century of humiliation while her previous series The Poppy War talks a lot about China's relationship with indigenous Taiwanese.
- paulgerhardt 3y agoIt was a strange read for me and the first time I’ve felt out of touch with the new generation of writers. The research quality is inconsistent—impressively thorough in some aspects yet glaringly lacking in others. The critique of 19th-century British imperialism is justified and compelling. However, the narrative abruptly shifts to a surprisingly uncritical support of Qing and Mughal Khan regimes, both of which had pretty shocking and unsound policies. Kind of flattening the politics into “British Empire bad, opponents of Britain good.” As an enthusiast of etymology, particularly when examining the concept of “revolution,” I found the book’s treatment disappointing. It overlooks the nuanced and historical origins of the term, especially relevant to 17th-century England during the Glorious Revolution’s swift rotations in power between Catholic and Protestant monarchs. Instead, it opts for a simplified, pop culture interpretation that equates revolution with the notion of ‘burn everything down.’ The pro-Luddite sections also felt like a mischaracterization of those nuanced movements without a clear working of the economic factors at play there which don’t lend them to be natural allies of the protagonists. Additionally, there’s a poor grasp of the military tactics associated with barricade warfare, comparable to what one might infer from a single viewing of Les Misérables. That whole section was a bit cringe. Which is to say the huge sections of the book had my face in my palms but I’m happy to be challenged and glad I read it to re-question my priors on a fascinating period with a fun, nerdy take on a magic system.
- epivosism 3y agoCame here to post Charles Stross's article about this and found it in a 2nd level comment, but it needs to be 1st level: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon-in-the-news.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldco... It's not as simple as it seems, as normal
- epivosism 3y agoFunny that this is being done partly in the name of RF Kuang, whose book "Babel" promotes a pretty violent strand of anti-white anti-colonial theory. That particular protagonist, a young Chinese boy rescued from poverty due to his innate magical talents, was walking one night when some awful racist louts threaten him and also accuse him of being willing to betray the nation of his benefactors; completely randomly (or so the story would have it) when a page later he runs into an ethnic Chinese who is obviously a criminal, the boy immediately "naturally" feels a kinship with him and decides to join his gang, which uses terrorism against innocent victims etc. It's pretty disgusting to write a validation of basically racist, anti-enlightenment feelings that "being of the same race as someone" is a strong positive reason to feel kinship/allyship with someone, even when that person is obviously breaking the law, and to also betray people who, although harsh and screwed up, clearly saved you from extremely serious immediate death. The author retcons some of this attempting to make the boy's rescuers evil enough to validate his utter betrayal of them... but again, being "mean" and not taking responsibility for a child is somehow considered more significant in this world than saving someone from literally dying within a few hours of the plague and giving him 10+ years of the worlds best education and inventing technology, which in our world's correlate, has led to billions of people escaping poverty. No, the fact that his dad is a meanie/jerk/sexist fully justifies firebombing him and his ilk. okay... And in the author's world-building, although magical resources are widely distributed, the only group which seems to be figuring out how to actually exploit them to increase wealth is England. But to the characters in the book, figuring out how to use those things at all, i.e. natural resource exploitation/study/efficiency improvement/industrialization is viewed as nothing more than stealing from indigenous people, rather than being a positive sum contribution to humanity. The fact that the original possessors of the silver, and other magical goods weren't doing anything with it is not mentioned. (at least in the 20% of the book I read before this scene, which basically suggests that non-white people should naturally coordinate to attack their white oppressors, led me to deleting it.) It's also funny that in this book, she's putting out pretty basic CCP anti-western rhetoric, like many other bloodthirsty communists I've met; yet here, she is being defended by normally pro-american, anti-censorship voices, while the CCP is being cast as "oppressing" her. Kuang, an illiberal person, whose education consisted of private school (Greenhill school, today's tuition 32k->39k/year) => Georgetown => Oxford => Yale
- feedforward 3y agoLuckily I live in the US - you'd never see things like the government demanding the heads of our most prominent universities be fired because they're not cracking down on anti-imperialist student groups hard enough.
- aaomidi 3y agoI think self-censorship is skyrocketing currently. There are a lot of folks who are scared of speaking out against Israel because according to a lot of authorities, that's now considered anti-semitic.
- silenced_trope 3y agoYup, there's also a lot scared of speaking out against Islam because to a lot of authorities it makes you an Islamophobe to point out that many Muslim migrants bring values completely anathema with the US, Britain, Canada, etc.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoInsane. If they were so concerned about what the CCP would think, why even have the awards in China?
- moate 3y agoSo everyone posing this question just gets "The mob voted China, so China it must be" and that's all well and good. Here's a better question: Why take on the challenge of organizing the awards/con in China if you oppose censorship? All these people resigned from posts, but it feels like a lack of forsight IMO (though, of course, hindsight is 50/50). If I was tasked with trying to balance a LITERARY award going off as intended with massive concerns about the host nation's reaction, at a certain point I might just say "I could go do anything else with my life instead" and let someone who's more pro-censorship take over. IDK, I have no aspirations to do great/important things, only things I can defend to myself, so maybe others have a harder time walking away from event organizing than I do.
- tjpnz 3y agoAs a science fiction reader with a healthy dislike of censorship and authoritarian regimes what's my best course of action? Has Hugo taken steps to ensure that there will not be a repeat of this? Are there freedom respecting alternatives more deserving of our support?
- barryrandall 3y agoDon't rely on awarding bodies for book endorsements?
- ianburrell 3y agoNothing will happen until this year’s Worldcon in Glasgow when the business meeting is held. I assume there will be amendments. One problem is that it takes two Worldcon for changes to be enacted. It is very much model from before internet. I hope they move administration of the Hugos under the WSFS and not each Worldcon. But the new revelations that lots of WSFS people were involved is disheartening. Voting should be done online in central place. The problem with Worldcon is that have super democratic model that is open to manipulation and hard to change. Nobody fixed things after puppies. Or changed when internet made online voting and central org possible.
- readthenotes1 3y agoHugo's are as relevant as the Oscars...
- karaterobot 3y agoMy opinion of China has not changed because my mental model already included it insisting on self-censorship from anyone who wants to do business there. I already don't buy books because they win or fail to win Hugo awards. I bet some people do, so this is marginally worse for them, because they're trusting someone else to curate books for them and now they might miss out. I guess the lesson is not to depend on which works of art (or of entertainment) get recognized for awards. For the authors who may have missed out on a Hugo award and whatever money a Hugo nomination or award brings (probably non-zero bump in sales) I guess I'm sorry. But they'll be fine, and this kerfuffle might even bring more attention to than a nomination would have: "would this book have won a Hugo?"
- theragra 3y agoBut how do you choose books if they are not curated somehow? Read all of them? This sentence does not make sense to me. You always choose based on some curation: reviews, word of mounth, cover blurbs etc etc
- EGG_CREAM 3y agoI have the same question. Goodreads has the same politics problem, plus the rotten tomatoes issue where authors seem to get punished for taking risks or not sticking rigidly to genre. I don’t know where to go for recommendations.
- corimaith 3y agoTry /lit/. As with most places in 4chan, don't take things too seriously but the people in those hobby boards do genuinely care about their respective hobby.
- EGG_CREAM 3y agoThanks so much, I’ll give it a look!
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
- causality0 3y agoand there was no one left to speak for me The Hugos have long disqualified authors for being politically inconvenient. Their actions with regards to China are one hundred percent on-brand.
- bluedays 3y agoHugo Awards have been weirdly political since the whole Sad Puppies thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies
- IronWolve 3y agoWikipedia is documenting one view of sad puppies. Check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76xQ_49V500 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76xQ_49V500 for another view with more details. This and gamergate made the public aware of politics in reviews and awards, which did help push people to look for a more group review about books. There are now tons of subreddits with each genre you can see what popular books are out. I stopped reading the hugo collections when they started to mix sci-fi and fantasy, because fantasy has more diversity, so mixing genres pushed the diversity goal. Now lots of diversity in sci-fi books, so its not really an issue of mixing genres to accomplish a goal. Kinda sucks that clashing of politics is included in everything, when all you want to do is a read a book. But the wikipedia article really isn't the entire truth from people watching from the outside knew what was going on. Thus they had to change the rules from block voting to stop the plebs from voting.
- lebean 3y agoI'm not in the scene, but as an outsider, this sounded like someone is complaining about DEI for Orcs, Dwarves, and Elves.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoMaybe, but I get it - the genres are different, and the tropes & conventions for them are different as well. I like some fantasy, but I strongly prefer science fiction. It's not a value judgement, one isn't better than the other - I just like reading scifi more than I like reading fantasy, and I wouldn't particularly want a collection that combines the two semi-indiscriminately. (There are stories & novels that mix the two, and those can be very interesting, though.) (Weirdly enough, I play D&D and other fantasy RPGs - but most games set in a sci-fi or modern setting don't interest me as much. Maybe it's harder to suspend my disbelief in Shadowrun when I'm vaguely aware of how hacking works, whereas magic is magic and I don't have to think about how a fireball works unless I want to.)
- karaterobot 3y ago> “Censoring people based on what you think that a government might not like is completely against what the whole science fiction project is,” he said. I wish there had been a little more examination of this statement. I don't see SF as fundamentally anti-censorship or anti-authoritarian (or the opposite). It's unrelated. If that weren't the case, there would not be SF in China at all, and there is.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThe fear China uses to control its population is leaking out of their country.
- anon-sre-srm 3y agoGreed and feeble cowardice enable it while denying creativity and freedom.
- max47 3y agoThe fear people have on NH about China is >10x worse than what real chinese people living in China feel about their own government. After living there for a while, the things I hear on US social media sounds like it came strait out of a South Park parody. Many of the supposedly high crimes that may get you jailed or killed (according to Americans) are the equivalent of jaywalking in New York City.
- aurareturn 3y agoExactly this. I felt extremely safe in Shenzen. More safe than I've ever been in any American city. Maximum propaganda about China in the west has done people in. But people in the west still swears that they actually have press freedom. Yet, no mainstream press will ever write anything remotely positive about China or simply daily life in China.
- phist_mcgee 3y agoWho says that feeling safe and authoritarian police states are mutually exclusive? In fact they go hand in hand, the state offers security and protection and the citizen offers up political agency and free-speech.
- sharlos201068 3y agoOf course you felt safe, you weren't publically opposing the regime.
- 3y ago
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- gkanai 3y agoThey should never have agreed to holding the Hugos in China.
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoThere is no "they" who agreed to it. The location is decided by a vote at the convention two years earlier. Anyone attending can vote. It turns out that there are a lot of Chinese SF fans who decided to vote in 2021.
- ipaddr 3y agoWhy does China forbid science fiction and where do super hero movies fit?
- DiogenesKynikos 3y agoSciFi is not forbidden in China, and is, in fact, extremely popular there.
- humanlity 3y agoFrankly, PRC forbids ideological dissent and political satire
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoThey don't. SF authors in general weren't excluded; it was some specific authors that China has a beef with.
- dang 3y agoRecent and related: Hugo Awards – A Report on Censorship and Exclusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39382323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39382323 - Feb 2024 (1 comment) The 2023 Hugo nomination statistics have been released and we have questions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39132185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39132185 - Jan 2024 (74 comments) Hugo Nomination Report Has Unexplained Ineligibility Rulings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39083571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39083571 - Jan 2024 (3 comments) 2023 Hugo Awards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38012127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38012127 - Oct 2023 (67 comments)
- Freak_NL 3y agoAlso for the investigative journalism behind this recent bunch of reports in the news (linked from the article on CBS as well): https://file770.com/the-2023-hugo-awards-a-report-on-censorship-and-exclusion/ https://file770.com/the-2023-hugo-awards-a-report-on-censors... I can recommend that report to anyone interested in digging a little deeper, and reading about the possible solutions entertained to prevent this in the future. And a view from one well-known sci-fi author: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2024/02/15/the-2023-hugo-fraud-and-where-we-go-from-here/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2024/02/15/the-2023-hugo-fraud-a...
- juanani 3y ago[dead]
- andrewstuart 3y agoPrinciples and Integrity. In short supply.
- anon-sre-srm 3y agoAnd leadership to pick somewhere reasonable rather than submit to the tyranny of the mob or stuffed ballot boxes.
- romusha 3y agoAnother event that will just fade away in the years ahead
- throwiogh 3y agoMany people are on Chinese payroll. I came across many news (including big outlets) articles giving a free pass to CCP or parroting them. The same people expect support from us when they need help to fight CCP
- humanlity 3y agoAs a Chinese, sometimes I don't know how censorship works. commonly literature related to the Cultural Revolution is heavily censored, but sci-fi books like Three Body, with this history, are prevalent in China today.
- pyuser583 3y agoI’m a practicing Roman Catholic. Its impossible for me to travel to China without failing the Sunday obligations for Mass. I’ve had to turn down jobs, conventions, study abroad opportunities, and networking events because my religion requires me to go to Mass. When I explain this to people, I get this weird look like, “Hey that’s your choice, but you must not take your career that seriously.” I have very little sympathy for anyone involved in this.
- transcriptase 3y agoSurely you must be aware that being unable to attend mass is not the same as intentionally not attending it, according to the church itself. It’s widely accepted among even the most religious Catholics that travel and work obligations (among other situations) are acceptable reasons for not attending Sunday mass. It’s not impossible for you to do those things as a practicing Roman Catholic in the slightest.
- pyuser583 3y agoIf there’s no Mass to go to, then you’re not obligated to go. If there’s a Mass next door, but there’s a 50% chance the attendees will be arrested and spend 10 years in jail, you take your chances and trust God. All it takes is fellow Catholic letting me know when/where Mass is and I have an obligation to risk my freedom and life. Kind of cowardly of me to say, “hey the locals can risk their butts to praise God, I’ll just sit it out.”
- toyg 3y agoBut not travelling at all is equally righteous? Sounds like a cop-out to me... Then again I'm not a theologian, and growing up in Italy taught me not to expect any actual consistency from any multi-millennial institution.
- pyuser583 3y agoI love traveling. Just not to places where going to Mass is illegal.
- mrguinea 3y ago——
- emsign 3y agoReminds me of the 1930s when people started to fear offending Nazis
- jcranmer 3y agoSomething that didn't make it into this article is that apparently, on top of all of this insanity, they still ended up throwing out all of the Chinese works that would have made the finalists list for unknown reasons (which seem to smell a lot like "can't let non-English texts win") [1]. At least one of the winners of the Hugo Awards has already rescinded her acceptance of the award as a result of all of these shenanigans: https://samtasticbooks.com/2024/02/17/rabbit-test-unwins-the-hugo/ https://samtasticbooks.com/2024/02/17/rabbit-test-unwins-the... [1] See, e.g., https://bsky.app/profile/tkingfisher.bsky.social/post/3kln57yixmk2p https://bsky.app/profile/tkingfisher.bsky.social/post/3kln57...
- maxglute 3y agoThis is the biggest part of the drama that of course western reporting/conversation will ignore - people think the organizers biased the selection to be pro PRC, when they are massively rigged against PRC titles that would have won via PRC community slate voting, which as far as Hugos (and past Hugo dramas) go, is a legitimate tactic. Excluding these western authors likely wouldn't even have mattered since PRC scifi community already voted for Chinese titles to win. PRC fans getting great intro to democracy / (dis)enfranchisement. But I guess they're used to that.
- 15457345234 3y agoGiving both sides a bone to chew on The Chinese side can say 'ahhhh Sinophobia, they dropped all the Chinese books because they're afraid of China' The Western side can say 'ahhhh censorship, they dropped all the Chinese books because they're afraid of China' How marvellous!
- aardvark179 3y agoOh it won’t be ignored. The EPH voting system is designed to make slates hard to get through, but if your slate is really popular it should still succeed, and the fact you need at least some form membership of the convention usually prevents a reasonable barrier to nomination stuffing. If the two Chinese publisher slates should have made it through then they should have made it through, and everybody could have picked through the data later and worked out if there was something else that needs to be done to stop groups nominating slates. If the votes weren’t valid then that should have been made clear and called out. There was a lot of surprise that Chinese works weren’t better represented on the ballot when the nominations were announced. As it is Dave has probably destroyed any chance we had of having a proper debate on how well the voting system works in the face of heavily voted for slates because he just made the votes disappear.
- enjeyw 3y agoI dislike the use of the world “offending” in the context of nation-stakes; it conjures this air of innocence around the state is if their primary failing is one of being overly sensitive. A better albeit wordy phrasing would be “for fear of invoking retribution from China as a consequence of not conforming to their authoritarian desires”.
- freemanon 3y ago[flagged]
- enjeyw 3y agoI have no personal insight into Confucius Institute censorship, but the reason I wrote “nation states” rather than China was because I agree, this applies in all directions.
- sinuhe69 3y agoThe communist party is still operating in the USA and at least nobody disturbed their national convention in 2019. Also, the Chinese Culture Center, arguably a pro-China activity, is still operating normally. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Culture_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Culture_Center
- snowpid 3y agoConfucian does not mean pro Communist and not pro CCP as some Commies have to learn it. I read in an anti China Magazin a reasoning for human right based on Confucian philosophy made on by Taiwanese philosophy phd student in Germany. I guess these discussion won't happen in your mentioned Confucian learning events.
- methou 3y ago> Zhao’s novel “Iron Widow” was flagged as being a “reimagining of the rise of the Chinese Empress Wu Zetian.” This is funny, Wu Zetian lives long before the PR China even existed, why should they even what image it paints.
- svl 3y agoIf you care to read deeper, including comments by many of the principal parties involved, there's no better place than https://file770.com/ https://file770.com/ (also linked to from this news article). It's hard to follow if you come in fresh, as it's a very active blog, with many pages of insightful comments on each post, but worthwhile. Here's the list of all posts from the last month which are primarily about this. (There are also daily roundup posts, and lots of small and relevant tidbits in there, too.) https://file770.com/chengdu-worldcon-releases-2023-hugo-nomination-statistics/ https://file770.com/2023-hugo-nomination-report-has-unexplained-ineligibility-rulings-also-reveals-who-declined/ https://file770.com/chengdu-hugo-administrator-dave-mccarty-fields-questions-on-facebook/ https://file770.com/hugo-controversy-hits-mainstream-news-a-chengdu-vice-chair-comments-in-social-media/ https://file770.com/zimozi-natsuco-guest-post-the-hugo-awards-evil-fall-is-a-watered-down-affair-and-certain-issues-to-watch-out-for/ https://file770.com/dave-mccarty-makes-statement-about-his-facebook-responses/ https://file770.com/worldcon-intellectual-property-announces-censure-of-mccarty-chen-shi-and-yalow-mccarty-resigns-eastlake-is-new-chair/ https://file770.com/decoding-the-tianwen-project/ https://file770.com/the-2023-hugo-awards-a-report-on-censorship-and-exclusion/ (the big one) https://file770.com/2023-hugo-awards-related-statement-by-kat-jones/ https://file770.com/diane-laceys-letter-about-the-2023-hugos/ https://file770.com/glasgow-2024-announces-kat-jones-resignation-as-hugo-administrator/ https://file770.com/chengdu-worldcon-wont-account-for-sponsorships/ https://file770.com/cheryl-morgan-dave-mccarty-resign-from-wsfs-hugo-award-marketing-committee/ The original nomination statistics dropped on January 20th (already bizarre; usually these are released as soon as the Hugo awards are awarded). In the month since then, fans have been puzzling together just what happened. Chances are that more will come to light in the coming weeks.
- ii41 3y agoThe whole thing is just stupid. I am reading Kuang's Babel right now, the Chinese version, published in China, by a publisher that would be called "state-owned" when it appears in a Western report. I have read Neil Gaiman's work that was published the same way before. And still, the Hugo people be like: let's censor them because they mention China. But's let's still spotlight Robert Sawyer even though he wrote a whole trilogy that can't be more anti-PRC [1]. Meanwhile, a bunch of other people be like: Chengdu is China, Xinjiang is China, China doesn't do things to muslims in Xinjiang that the US and Israel do to muslims in the Middle East, so let's protest Sci-fi events in Chengdu! And now we have a purge on the Hugo organizers. Disclaimer: I'm a Chinese mainlander Sci-fi reader and I have a view on China that most of HN will likely disagree with. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWW_Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWW_Trilogy
- denton-scratch 3y ago> so let's protest Sci-fi events in Chengdu! That's silly; the issue isn't about Xinjiang, or Taiwan, or Tibet. It's about the organizers of a scifi award manipulating the nomination lists in the hope of pleasing the host-country, and doing it with ignorance and incompetence. BTW: I also have opinions about China. I'm not about to share them either; but not because people would disagree with me. I'm not sharing them because they're off-topic.
- gtirloni 3y agoI've been at conferences that were originally scheduled to happen in the US and were switched to Canada because of simple visa requirements that changed. It wasn't even impossible to get visas, it was just a bit more inconvenient than previously. The organizers must be tone deaf if they thought China would be a good place to give awards to participants that did anything remotely bad from China's perspective. Tragedy of the commons (the voting) that they should have blocked. Funny side note: many travel agencies in Brazil are advertising "Get your Chinese visa now! No need to for interview! Instant approval"
- Kye 3y ago1930s: hugo boss gives cover for fascism 2020s: hugo boss gives cover for fascism
- theknocker 3y ago[dead]
- ametrau 3y agoHow much money were they paid to do it in China and was it enough to cover the loss of dignity?
- citizenpaul 3y agoThe Hugo awards have been bending knee to politics, various social movements, and general "optics" pressure for probably close to a decade. I stopped looking at them as a source of recommendations a while ago. Another trashed source of formerly unbiased reviews. Its really simple. Is the book good? Thats all they needed to do. An award for creative writing acting as censor and "rightspeak authority" is the world we live in now.
- hulitu 3y ago> Science fiction authors were excluded from awards for fear of offending China Or they were excluded just to have a new reason to bash China.
- ngcc_hk 3y agoStill do not get the memo. You see how Hong Kong is silenced. And the hammer or axe or whatever is out. Should treat china as a default check on liberty. If you cannot give an award because you are afraid. This award is a doom.