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This time it didn't seem to work out well for the organizers. The organization behind the Hugo Awards "Worldcon Intellectual Property" announced resignations an

This 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 ago
Glad 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 ago
  Because the world should NOT be splited more and more.
  - ngcc_hk 3y ago
    Let 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 ago
  Three Body Problem isn't good enough to legitimately win a Hugo. There's clearly money lining pockets to promote their culture and political cant.
  - e12e 3y ago
    While not my favorite book, I think it's certainly Hugo quality. What would you pick for 2015? Besides, winning would seem fair, nominations possibly not? The list was: https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/ https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/ The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu translator (Tor Books) The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books) Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK) Skin Game, Jim Butcher (Orbit UK/Roc Books) The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
    - vertoc 3y ago
      Personally, I enjoyed Goblin Emperor much more
    - ciberado 3y ago
      I read "The Three Body Problem" due to all the promotion it received at the time. In fact, I proposed it as the first book for our small reading club. We all agreed that I should have simply bought some beers and read whatever book another member had proposed. While the book presented two very good ideas (the nature of the history loop and the "computer architecture"), it was marred by excessive repetition, flat characters, and poor writing (at least, in the Spanish version). Some characters' reactions to certain events were utterly ridiculous, and the deus ex machina resolution was disappointing. The structure was so repetitious that it seemed as if half of the book was the same chapter repeated over and over. I found it quite boring. I would appreciate any suggestions for works by other Chinese science fiction authors, as I understand that it's not fair to judge such a vast culture based on a single data point.
      - int_19h 3y ago
        I concur on all your points. The writing was so bad - basically middle of the line fanfic level - that at first I thought that it was a low-quality English translation; but I was assured that it was faithful to the original. When it was announced as Hugo winner, I was speechless. I should also add that as reasonably hard sci-fi goes, the very notion of "sophons" (and their mechanics) as presented are not even wrong. In general, when it comes to most sci-fi elements of the book aside from the titular concept, it felt like someone just clipped whatever sounded cool from a popular science magazine and then tried to write a segment of the story around it - i.e. some things, like nanowires/sheets, are introduced not because they make sense in context, but solely for the cool factor.
- zhdc1 3y ago
  There was a good discussion on Reddit about it. I don’t have the link but it should be easy to find. Annual meetings are apparently organized by local groups who lobby/compete with one another. China has a very large SciFi readership and the group from Chengdu was very active when it came to lobbying and gathering votes. It wasn’t until later that people started to realize this may not have been the best decision, e.g. with visa applications and so on. As far as the actual scandal, there’s also discussion about whether there was any actual government intervention or if this was mainly the result of self-sensorship.
  - themacguffinman 3y ago
    The risk of government intervention (read: penalties for everyone involved) is what drives self-censorship. There's no meaningful distinction between the two.
    - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
      > read: penalties for everyone involved Read: being denied an exit visa, arbitrary detention, torture, being disappeared, being executed. These are all things that the Chinese government does as a matter of course. For instance, this Australian woman spent 3 years in detention and was tortured for releasing a government report a few minutes early: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/17/like-being-buried-alive-australian-journalist-cheng-lei-on-life-in-a-chinese-prison https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/17/like-...
      - eastbound 3y ago
        [flagged]
        saagarjha 3y ago
        Look, I hate pulling out the fallacies list, but this is literally the dictionary definition of tu quoque. Nobody mentioned the US here, and it's not relevant to the discussion.
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  There is no actual organization that makes decisions. It's a fan convention with no governance structure other than that whoever shows up at the convention gets to vote on things. At each convention, fan groups that want to host the convention after the next one submit proposals and then attendees vote to choose one. Whichever wins the vote gets to run the convention.
- DinoCoder99 3y ago
  Why not?
  - DinoCoder99 3y ago
    [dead]
- euroderf 3y ago
  Considering that China is the most populous country on the planet, and that some of its sci-fi has recently attracted worldwide attention, it makes sense that China gets a shot at hosting. And then... they screwed it up.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    Well to be fair, it looks like the non-Chinese organizers screwed it up.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    There probably was no way to hold this in china without not screwing it up.
- svl 3y ago
  As others have said, between competing bids for who'd host Worldcon in 2023, China got the most votes (from registered fans at an earlier Worldcon). However, there was also controversy about this, as a very large number of those votes lacked an address (a minimal safety feature to give some indication that votes belong to distinct people). The responsible committee decided not to count them, but was overruled. If it wasn't for that, Chengdu wouldn't have won the bid.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    That's an obvious scam that any trained eye spots in 5 seconds, and very typical for more primitive undemocratic societies like Russia and China. I am curious why nobody reacted since at least few must have realized this. Once you clarify you deal with scam no voting can overrule anything, you can easily go public and expose people if they would keep pushing for it. This is 2024, we have (at least some) tools to deal with such things in such situations.
    - pavel_lishin 3y ago
      According to Charles Stross's explanation of how Worldcons work, you don't really need to fake votes - you can just buy them at $50/pop: > 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. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon-in-the-news.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldco... No scam involved at all, to be honest - just regular voting-with-money.
svl 3y ago
Please note that Kevin Standlee is a good egg here, and was not involved with this iteration of the Hugo awards and everything which went wrong with it. His only fault was saying something impolitic at the wrong time, which people feared would be misunderstood due to his position as Chair. (You can see the difference in censured/reprimanded and in the reasoning behind it, but it's easy to skip over that and just retain the list of names. Kevin does not deserve to be lumped in with the others!)
- geoelectric 3y ago
  Thanks for this. Kevin has been a part of the Bay Area SF fandom community for a very long time, and I’ve never known him to be anything other than a good, honorable person. I was saddened to see his name on the list of people associated with this, and would have a hard time believing he’d ever act intentionally to undermine Worldcon or the Hugos.
- ncallaway 3y ago
  I think this is important to note, and a good call-out. I think Kevin’s statements were dangerous and problematic (from a maintaining the Hugo trademark perspective) but were more of an administrative/legal concern, regarding the organization’s ability to effectively police the trademark. His statements also probably weren’t wrong about what was possible, but just not something that an entity that represents the Trademark holder should say in public. But, he wasn’t associated with the disaster that was the awards presentation. McCarty and other administrators of the award committee should be banned from being near this process for life. Standlee hasn’t done _anything_ so problematic, and seems to have good intentions about the whole thing.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Glad 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 ago
Because the world should NOT be splited more and more.
- ngcc_hk 3y ago
  Let 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 ago
Three Body Problem isn't good enough to legitimately win a Hugo. There's clearly money lining pockets to promote their culture and political cant.
- e12e 3y ago
  While not my favorite book, I think it's certainly Hugo quality. What would you pick for 2015? Besides, winning would seem fair, nominations possibly not? The list was: https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/ https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/ The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu translator (Tor Books) The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books) Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK) Skin Game, Jim Butcher (Orbit UK/Roc Books) The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
  - vertoc 3y ago
    Personally, I enjoyed Goblin Emperor much more
  - ciberado 3y ago
    I read "The Three Body Problem" due to all the promotion it received at the time. In fact, I proposed it as the first book for our small reading club. We all agreed that I should have simply bought some beers and read whatever book another member had proposed. While the book presented two very good ideas (the nature of the history loop and the "computer architecture"), it was marred by excessive repetition, flat characters, and poor writing (at least, in the Spanish version). Some characters' reactions to certain events were utterly ridiculous, and the deus ex machina resolution was disappointing. The structure was so repetitious that it seemed as if half of the book was the same chapter repeated over and over. I found it quite boring. I would appreciate any suggestions for works by other Chinese science fiction authors, as I understand that it's not fair to judge such a vast culture based on a single data point.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      I concur on all your points. The writing was so bad - basically middle of the line fanfic level - that at first I thought that it was a low-quality English translation; but I was assured that it was faithful to the original. When it was announced as Hugo winner, I was speechless. I should also add that as reasonably hard sci-fi goes, the very notion of "sophons" (and their mechanics) as presented are not even wrong. In general, when it comes to most sci-fi elements of the book aside from the titular concept, it felt like someone just clipped whatever sounded cool from a popular science magazine and then tried to write a segment of the story around it - i.e. some things, like nanowires/sheets, are introduced not because they make sense in context, but solely for the cool factor.
zhdc1 3y ago
There was a good discussion on Reddit about it. I don’t have the link but it should be easy to find. Annual meetings are apparently organized by local groups who lobby/compete with one another. China has a very large SciFi readership and the group from Chengdu was very active when it came to lobbying and gathering votes. It wasn’t until later that people started to realize this may not have been the best decision, e.g. with visa applications and so on. As far as the actual scandal, there’s also discussion about whether there was any actual government intervention or if this was mainly the result of self-sensorship.
- themacguffinman 3y ago
  The risk of government intervention (read: penalties for everyone involved) is what drives self-censorship. There's no meaningful distinction between the two.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
    > read: penalties for everyone involved Read: being denied an exit visa, arbitrary detention, torture, being disappeared, being executed. These are all things that the Chinese government does as a matter of course. For instance, this Australian woman spent 3 years in detention and was tortured for releasing a government report a few minutes early: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/17/like-being-buried-alive-australian-journalist-cheng-lei-on-life-in-a-chinese-prison https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/17/like-...
    - eastbound 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - saagarjha 3y ago
        Look, I hate pulling out the fallacies list, but this is literally the dictionary definition of tu quoque. Nobody mentioned the US here, and it's not relevant to the discussion.
TheCoelacanth 3y ago
There is no actual organization that makes decisions. It's a fan convention with no governance structure other than that whoever shows up at the convention gets to vote on things. At each convention, fan groups that want to host the convention after the next one submit proposals and then attendees vote to choose one. Whichever wins the vote gets to run the convention.
DinoCoder99 3y ago
Why not?
- DinoCoder99 3y ago
  [dead]
euroderf 3y ago
Considering that China is the most populous country on the planet, and that some of its sci-fi has recently attracted worldwide attention, it makes sense that China gets a shot at hosting. And then... they screwed it up.
- adastra22 3y ago
  Well to be fair, it looks like the non-Chinese organizers screwed it up.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  There probably was no way to hold this in china without not screwing it up.
svl 3y ago
As others have said, between competing bids for who'd host Worldcon in 2023, China got the most votes (from registered fans at an earlier Worldcon). However, there was also controversy about this, as a very large number of those votes lacked an address (a minimal safety feature to give some indication that votes belong to distinct people). The responsible committee decided not to count them, but was overruled. If it wasn't for that, Chengdu wouldn't have won the bid.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  That's an obvious scam that any trained eye spots in 5 seconds, and very typical for more primitive undemocratic societies like Russia and China. I am curious why nobody reacted since at least few must have realized this. Once you clarify you deal with scam no voting can overrule anything, you can easily go public and expose people if they would keep pushing for it. This is 2024, we have (at least some) tools to deal with such things in such situations.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    According to Charles Stross's explanation of how Worldcons work, you don't really need to fake votes - you can just buy them at $50/pop: > 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. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon-in-the-news.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldco... No scam involved at all, to be honest - just regular voting-with-money.

svl 3y ago

Please note that Kevin Standlee is a good egg here, and was not involved with this iteration of the Hugo awards and everything which went wrong with it. His only fault was saying something impolitic at the wrong time, which people feared would be misunderstood due to his position as Chair. (You can see the difference in censured/reprimanded and in the reasoning behind it, but it's easy to skip over that and just retain the list of names. Kevin does not deserve to be lumped in with the others!)

geoelectric 3y ago
Thanks for this. Kevin has been a part of the Bay Area SF fandom community for a very long time, and I’ve never known him to be anything other than a good, honorable person. I was saddened to see his name on the list of people associated with this, and would have a hard time believing he’d ever act intentionally to undermine Worldcon or the Hugos.
ncallaway 3y ago
I think this is important to note, and a good call-out. I think Kevin’s statements were dangerous and problematic (from a maintaining the Hugo trademark perspective) but were more of an administrative/legal concern, regarding the organization’s ability to effectively police the trademark. His statements also probably weren’t wrong about what was possible, but just not something that an entity that represents the Trademark holder should say in public. But, he wasn’t associated with the disaster that was the awards presentation. McCarty and other administrators of the award committee should be banned from being near this process for life. Standlee hasn’t done _anything_ so problematic, and seems to have good intentions about the whole thing.