[EDIT 1/23/24: Instead of continuing to update this post with further developments, particularly related to Dave McCarty’s Facebook activity, I decided to assign that mess its own post. Feel free to follow along.]
It’s been three long months since the Hugo Awards ceremony ended, and the nominating statistics have finally been released. And they immediately validate all the concerns people have been expressing about the legitimacy of this year’s awards. I compiled a series of articles, blog posts, reddit posts, tweets, and comments on all of the above, to attempt to paint a picture of what happened and what happens next.
It started in 2018, when China submitted a bid to host the 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu. Site Selection was determined at DisCon III in 2021 by members of the WSFS (fans who buy a membership for the privilege to vote), but not without a little controversy first. Chengdu’s main competitor for Worldcon at the time was Winnipeg, Canada. It seems that word got around that many of the Worldcon votes were online ballots from China (as opposed to votes cast onsite at DisCon) that did not include a street address, as a result of heavy canvassing of Chinese voters by the Chengdu bidrunners. Site Selection administrator Tim Szczesuil brought up these concerns at the Business Meeting the day before the announcement and asked the attendees for advice. Whether as a last-ditch attempt to snag the bid, or because of an actual concern for the legitimacy of the Site Selection vote, a couple leaders of the Winnipeg bid proposed a resolution at the Business Meeting , which advised the Site Selection administrator to essentially negate all ballots lacking a street address based on part of the WSFS Constitution: “4.4.1: Site-selection ballots shall include name, signature, address, and membership-number spaces to be filled in by the voter.” Arguments against the resolution were that the constitution should be interpreted to mean that each ballot just needs to have the words “name, signature, address, membership-number” written somewhere on the ballot with space to include those pieces of information if desired, not that they actually need to be filled out. The fans present at the business meeting passed the resolution 47-30. However, the motion was non-binding and the Discon 3 chair, Mary Robinette Kowal, overruled the resolution and allowed the votes to be counted. Thus, Chengdu won the 2023 Worldcon Site Selection vote in a landslide. Of the 2006 votes for Chengdu (compared to 807 for Winnipeg), 1591 were pre-con ballots from China that were missing a street address, but otherwise determined to be valid. [EDIT 1/22/24: the previous parapraph was corrected and edited for clarification based on further research due to helpful input from Lisa Hertel]
Cue outrage. Both from people believing the Worldcon had been bought in a move that, while not technically illegal, undermined the spirit of the convention, and from protesters of China’s human rights violations and government meddling. Not to mention what some felt were morally questionable choices for guest of honor, Liu Cixin and Sergey Lukianenko. Furthermore, thanks to the nature of Worldcon, there is not an actual governing body that has power to take action, and all power is given to the committee of each individual con, in this case Chengdu.
Skip forward to the months leading up to the Worldcon and things start getting sloppy. The date of the convention was changed from August to October. Once Hugo voting was opened, people reported technical issues with the website. Nominations closed on April 30 but finalists weren’t announced until July 6 with little and poor communication. That’s when I personally started to get suspicious. At the time, I invented some sort of riveting drama in my head between Chengdu and the Hugo Awards committee based on moral/political conflict, but came to learn that there’s no such thing as an independent Hugo Awards committee and that any such committee is appointed by the Worldcon. So unless some of the individual appointees were taking a stand against their appointers behind the scenes, that wasn’t a thing.
Then the finalists were announced. The glaring omission was Babel by R.F. Kuang, a Chinese expat who, according to some, has been critical of the PRC. Babel had been sweeping up other SFF awards and was overwhelmingly expected to be a Hugo finalist. There was speculation that Kuang had declined a nomination, as some authors do, but her publisher indicated that was not the case. [ETA: Kuang has since made a statement] The only thing left to do was wait for the nominating statistics released after each Hugo ceremony to find out what happened.
Except they never came. Typically the detailed statistics, including a “longlist” of books, authors, etc. who almost made the ballot are released within days, if not hours, after the ceremony. When pressed about the delay, Hugo subcommittee member Dave McCarty initially posted on his personal Facebook page: “The detailed Hugo stats are delayed entirely because of my poor understanding of how swamped I was gonna be on site … this delay is purely to make sure that everything I put out is verified as correct (and the detailed stats take time to verify, there’s lot of stuff going on there).” At first there were sentiments of patience and understanding. As time went on with no sign of the stats, people began to ask questions. Dave delayed: “These are wonderful questions that I’ll have time to chat about after the stats are out.” And deflected: “Which is worse….delaying the publication or putting out detail information with mistakes that the public catches? I think faulty information is immensely more damaging than late information and as the person that’s actually responsible for protecting the reputation of the event this year to the best of my ability, we’re going to go with my call on how to do it.”
11 weeks pass and still no nomination stats. The WSFS constitution states that the voting and nominating statistics must be released within 90 days of the end of Worldcon, and Dave waited until the last possible moment. That’s when the fit hit the shan. There on the first page of the nominating stats was Babel, with enough votes to make the final ballot, but with an asterisk indicating “not eligible.” No further explanation. There were at least three other potential finalists unaccountably determined ineligible. When asked to explain the ineligibility, Dave replied: “After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.” When asked to explain why exactly they were not eligible, Dave only repeated: ““asked and answered” with increasing douchebaggery: “Are you slow?” , “You can’t parse a sentence in what I assume is your native language.” Inexplicable ineligibility was only the first issue. In a delightful display of neepery, Heather Rose Jones represents the “distribution cliff” in multiple categories and proposes several hypotheses for the reason. Basically, the actual numbers are a joke and are obviously either made-up whole cloth, tampered with, or otherwise misrepresented.
So what actually happened? People have started putting forward different interpretations. Cheryl Morgan, who I believe helps moderate the Hugo Awards website, which is more or less just a place to report Hugo news, seems to suggest on her blog that the wacky stats were a way for Dave McCarty, or other Chengdu Hugo administrators who may have worked on the stats, to slyly signal “RED FLAG SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE.” Like maybe they’ve been threatened by China to doctor the votes and not say anything about it? And those are the intentionally vague “rules we must follow?” Camestros Felapton offers several conclusions, the most significant of which is “I do not trust the data and, as awful it is to say this, I don’t trust the results of the 2023 Hugo Awards.”
One question I have is why Dave McCarty was all “I think faulty information is immensely more damaging than late information and as the person that’s actually responsible for protecting the reputation of the event this year to the best of my ability…” back in October, and all “[The final voting stats] have been reviewed at multiple levels by our team and all the things we could find that needed correction have been resolved” in December (citing typos, translations, and font issues), and now refuses to elaborate on the steaming pile that he just shoveled out. Why release anything at all if it’s so evidently ridiculous? Dave, it’s safe to say you failed miserably in your responsibility to protect the event’s reputation. Like does he legitimately have a real or perceived gun pointed at him keeping him from saying anything of substance? And is anyone else going to show their face? Dave mentions a team so I assume he is not the sole pooch screwer. Are there any other Worldcon representatives who want to take pride in their con and are willing to step forward and disavow whatever these stats are? Another avenue possibly worth exploring is a remark made by Adao Lee in a comment to one of Dave’s Facebook posts: “Pro. Zheng Yu Jiang was kicked out from Hugo Awards Selection Executive Department for reason never explained public … and now you are working with Joe Yao? Joe is a guy keeping delay things and cannot keep his promise (which I shared in several public Weibo post e.g. https://weibo.com/5726230680/4962307009940139)” to which Dave replied: “Conspiracy bullshit.” Some commenters on File 770’s analysis of the situation question Dave’s integrity based on previous interactions.
What happens now? Because of the aforementioned structure of each Worldcon being a fiefdom unto itself, explained well in another blog post by Cheryl Morgan, the answer is maybe nothing. Because, essentially, each Worldcon/Hugo committee can basically do whatever they want. They are supposed to follow the constitution but are not actually beholden to it and there’s no oversight. Some have suggested making amendments to the constitution to prevent this from happening again, but amendments only apply if each future Worldcon chooses to follow them. In another comment on the File 770 post, Kevin Standlee, another Hugos site contributor, explains: “Nothing legally or practically binds Worldcons. Rules are not self-enforcing. The entire structure assumes that people will behave themselves. And surprisingly, over the 80-plus year history of the convention, most of them have done so … Worldcons have followed the rules because their organizers valued the respect of their fellow fans. Somewhat more hazily, they may think they want to hold the convention again someday, and they want people to vote for them the next time that they run.” If any given Worldcon does not share those motivations, it seems all bets are off. [ETA: Standlee goes into even further detail here.]
Jason Sanford suggests more centralized oversight, but laments that previous attempts have been shut down. [ETA: Cheryl Morgan alternatively suggests “decoupling Hugo Award Administration from the host Worldcon, so that the laws of the host country cannot interfere with the voting process.”] Maybe these shenanigans will be a catalyst for change the same way the Puppies debacle was back around 2015? My righteous anger is currently aimed, whether misplaced or not, toward Dave McCarty and his alleged team, but I have little faith answers will come at this point.
[ETA 1/22 12:30 pm MST]: When it was suggested on Dave McCarty’s Facebook page that his actions were being compelled by Chinese government, he replied “That I will categorically deny. Nobody has ordered me to do anything. Nobody is changing decisions I have made.” Instead he gushed about the local government and the interactions they shared. He went on “I am certain there are people [other conrunners/administrators] that didn’t work on Chengdu that understand the answer [apparently referring to his evasive “the rules we must follow” remark] and can attest to the fact that it is true and accurate. That’s where my responsibility ends on this matter.” I have never worked on a con, but I can’t find any evidence from previous Hugos that indicate other instances of works being determined ineligible without explanation. Are any of the people to whom Dave refers willing to provide any context on the matter? And again, at what point did the Dave “that’s actually responsible for protecting the reputation” turn into “that’s where my responsibility ends” Dave?
