(TibetanReview.net, Feb18’24) – Organizers of the Hugo Awards, one of the most prominent literary awards in science fiction, excluded multiple authors from shortlists last year over concerns their work or public comments could be offensive to China, reported pajiba.com and nbcnews.com Feb 26, citing leaked emails. The 2023 event was held in Jun 2023 in the Chinese city of Chengdu.
Writers including Neil Gaiman, RF Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer were deemed ineligible as finalists despite earning enough votes, said the nbcnews.com report, citing information published last month by awards organizers.
“As we are happening in China and the ‘laws’ we operate under are different… we need to highlight anything of sensitive political nature in the work,” Dave McCarty, the head of the 2023 awards jury, was shown to be written in an email dated Jun 5.
Any work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet or other sensitive issues “needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot,” he was stated to have added.
This and the other emails dealing with the issue were sent to the administrators who were from Western countries, “the group of folks that are validating the Hugo finalists”, with none of the Chinese members of the administration team being listed as recipients.
“At the moment, the best guidance I have is ‘mentions of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, negatives of China’. I will try to get better guidance when I have a chance to dig into this deeper with the Chinese folks on the committee,” McCarty had written in that email.
This was in response to an email from Kat Jones asking for a “list or a resource you can point us to that elaborates on ‘other topics that may be an issue in China’?”
Kat Jones had been announced as the Administrator for the 2024 Glasgow Hugo Awards but resigned Feb 15 under intense public pressure, said the pajiba.com report.
The emails were released by awards organizer Diane Lacey, who wrote some of the emails and said in an accompanying apology letter that in hindsight she probably should have resigned.
“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,” Lacey has written.
The emails, which were first reported by science fiction writers and journalists Chris M Barkley and Jason Sanford on science fiction news site File 770 and Sanford’s Patreon account, show awards organizers detailing potential “negatives of China” in authors’ published works, book reviews and social media histories, said the nbcnews.com report.
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. Zhao’s novel Iron Widow was flagged as being a “reimagining of the rise of the Chinese Empress Wu Zetian,” the report said.
Organizers have also flagged comments that authors had made about the merits of holding the awards in Chengdu and whether they signed or shared the open letter.
“They went through all my blog posts and all my reviews like a fine-tooth comb,” Paul Weimer, an American author and three-time Hugo nominee who was disqualified, has told NBC News.
Among the reasons cited for excluding Weimer was his supposed previous travel to Tibet, although he only went to Nepal.
While we don’t know if unofficial political or financial pressure was put on McCarty to censor works potentially offensive to the Chinese government, it’s obvious he chose to do so, and still believes it was the right choice, said the pajiba.com report.
Still, “Dave McCarty isn’t unusual. Western movie and music studios, organizations, and governments have grown comfortable with self-censorship. We’ll put up with a lot if it means access to China’s massive economy. But it’s a reminder how easily we can convince ourselves we’re doing the right thing,” the report said.
McCarty resigned from his role in the awards last month.
In a statement on Feb 15, the organizers of the 2024 Hugo Awards in Glasgow have said they were taking steps “to ensure transparency and to attempt to redress the grievous loss of trust in the administration of the Awards,” said the nbcnews.com report.