Gernsback Deserved Better

The WSFS has inherited a shameful legacy. It doesn't deserve to recover.

Back in my Fallout: Chengdu piece a few weeks ago, Saga of the Swordbreaker author Kit Sun Cheah suspected that the shadiness behind the scenes at Worldcon 81’s Hugos was likely due to self-censorship by the awards committee so as not to rouse the ire of government censors, saying:

“Where the Chinese organizers are concerned, it's better to be seen as inept by the world than to be seen as a threat to the state. Self-censorship carries a lower cost than being censored.”

It was speculation at the time. Now of course, we know the event’s committee was removing viable nominees from contention simply to appease the Chinese regime.

Original tweet here.

A lot has happened since our last piece on the scandal-ridden proceedings of this past Worldcon. While none of it is surprising, it doesn’t make the latest news any more palatable. The harsh light of day has been shone on the awards’ behind-the-scenes dealings. For some, swift judgements were meted out. The aftershock of it all has left everyone feeling bitter, angry, at a loss. If there were any justice in this world, the repercussions of this would be fatal to the reputation of the award and the event as a whole. Not only for the decisions made this past year but for years of intellectual and moral rot that resulted in an organization of writers and artists partnering with an oppressive totalitarian state to begin with.

But let me not get ahead of myself. If you want to read the leaked emails for yourself, click the link below:

READ THE LEAKED WORLDCON CENSORSHIP EMAILS HERE

First, The Casualties

In the immediate aftermath of the “ineligibles” scandal, the Worldcon Intellectual Property (W.I.P.) board started clearing house. Saying in a statement issued January 30 that it “takes very seriously the recent complaints about the 2023 Hugo Award process and complaints about comments made by persons holding official positions in W.I.P.” it proceeded to announce that Hugo Awards Director Dave McCarty and Board of Directors Chair Kevin Standlee had both “resigned”.

They went on to further announce the censure of McCarty, Standlee and several others involved (via File 770):

• 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.

But for McCarty, who seemed to be the public mouthpiece for the event on social media, the hits kept coming. On February 18, File 770 (*hurk*) reported that McCarty had “resigned” as Chair of the Worldcon Marketing Committee along with member Cheryl Morgan.

McCarty, you might remember from my previous reporting, had been giving statements leading up to the final report on the event that I definitely construed as shifty.

Recall, for instance, that McCarty made a point to insist that the communist Chinese government had no formal contact whatsoever between himself or anyone handling the Hugos.

Recall how his official statement on social media referred to “the rules we have to follow”, attempting to give the appearance of his hands having been tied.

It was, of course, all a lie.

“laws”.

“There are no enemies on the left,” McCarty, largely assisted by Kat Jones, was all too happy to do the Chinese government’s work for them, combing through each nominee’s online presence and listing anything the State might have seen as distasteful laid out bullet point-by-bullet point:

Fucking disgraceful.

Feel free to read the emails for yourself in the link above. I can’t stomach posting anymore of this utter cowardice.

In the report written up recently by Chris Barkley and Jason Sanford, quotes from Jones included shock that “this extremely, extremely confidential material was shared in the first place” and wants everyone to know that she was just following orders, you guys:

“For Chengdu, I conducted the eligibility research as instructed by the 2023 Hugo Award Administrator, and asked for clarifications where instructions were not clear. I did have concerns, and I shared them with the Administrator. Those concerns you should have evidence of if you have access to all communications. I was not involved in the evaluation of the data we flagged – and you’ll note in those emails we all expressed confusion over the vague instructions and had no idea whether anything we were mentioning was an actual problem. I had serious concerns at this point about this process. I then stepped back and did no further work for the Chengdu Worldcon after the first pass of eligibility research. I only had visibility into that first step as a Hugo researcher. I did not ever and do not have visibility into why the choices that were made, were made.”

She would later say that “I would not be willing to participate in any way in the administration of an award under such circumstances again.” God help me. Read her full response here.

As for the mainstream sci-fi community at large?

John Scalzi has broken up with McCarty on his blog.

Neil Gaiman seems about ready to wash his hands of the Hugos, saying, “I’m unsure how comfortable I would be participating if anything I was involved in was nominated for a Hugo in 2024, if there were people involved who had been part of what happened in Chengdu.”

Mary Robinette Kowal utterly torched McCarty on BlueSky, over his lack of integrity regarding the presence of the controversial pro-Russian nationalist Sergey Lukianenko as a Guest of Honor, his choice of using shady vote-counting software and more.

Cheryl Morgan has a few ideas for how the Hugos should change going forward, but they’re all wrong. You’re all wrong.

You’re all wrong.

After this? The Hugos should die.

Nobody Gets It

No one involved in this year’s event was a hero here, except for those distinguished individuals who declined their nominations, and Diane Lacey, who provided Chris Barkley and Jason Sanford with the emails that exposed all of this. No one who’s been carping for the past week since Barkley and Sanford published their report, wringing their hands about the damage this has done, is seeing what the real problem is. We’re way past the time for any of that now. You made the decision to get into bed with communists. What did you think was going to happen? Open and fair dealings?

Progressives, and by extension, the mainstream SF/F authors and people involved in the decision making in this event, understand this: China hates you.

Chinese values writ large are diametrically opposed to both modern and ingrained American cultural and moral values. They value social harmony over individualism and freedom and see the blatant sociopolitical pandering you insist on shoving into your books as degeneracy. Their fans don’t care about your books or some gweilo fart huffer’s feminist reimagining of anything. They have a special brand of contempt for Non-Han Western-born Chinese complete with their own slurs.

Oh, and lest you’ve forgotten, they tend not to be fond of blacks.

Forget Where’s Waldo? Time to play Finding Finn.

If An Awakening Comes, It Will Be Too Late

The only principled move here would have been the wholesale rejection of China as a viable selection site. Barring that, the nomination committee should have pushed back against the CCP’s policies of censorship. Conduct a straight and open tally of the votes, only rendering people ineligible for reasons explicitly stated in the WSFS’s constitution, and make as big and attention-getting a stink as possible when the inevitable controversy came your way, in the name of championing freedom of speech. That would have been an actual courageous display of what American values are supposed to be.

The Hugos are named after a writer who was an American citizen, who left an enduring legacy to a genre of literature that for a long time felt distinctly American, given our culture’s pioneering spirit, and its nominees found their greatest significance in American markets. It is, at its core, an inescapably American award, which is why the shameful readiness with which some of its American committee members cast nominees aside in favor of pacifying the PRC leaves many like myself feeling utter disgust.

But what are we to expect from WorldCon? They long ago decided that they had to gatekeep the con. The moment media consumers of Science Fiction started showing up (Fans of the Original Star Trek) Worldcon decided that they were a literary con. Can’t have the dirty common folk in, can we?

To any Hugo committee apparatchiks involved with Chengdu who may be reading this: I don’t believe for the slightest moment you were bound by any “laws.” You didn’t have to do this. You chose to. Every single one of you can go to hell. You threw your own peers to the wolves in the name of censorship, you spineless cowards. Obviously screwing authors who didn’t deserve it didn’t end with the Puppies.

The report by Barkley and Sanford is all well and good, but I’m not absolving them, either.

Hey, Chris Barkley, your Fan Writer award is hopelessly tainted. Are you going to give it back, knowing that you could very likely have it because Paul Weimer wasn’t on the ballot?

Before anybody starts patting Sanford on the back to vigorously, don’t forget that he’s all for stirring up overhyped horseshit when people he disagrees with are having fun he doesn’t approve of. Glad you made it off your fainting couch to put this report together, Jason. Baen’s Bar is still around and you still haven’t won anything. Fuck you.

Will anyone who won a Hugo at this hopelessly corrupted farce of an awards ceremony be returning their rocket trophy in the wake of all this? My money’s on not. Kat Jones at least had enough shame to resign from her post as Administrator for Glasgow Worldcon, but the fact that we haven’t seen an exodus of outrage from members and associates in the wake of this out of sheer desire to preserve some kind of value to the thing is SFWA-levels of willingness to whistle past the graveyard.

The Hugos are dead. As someone who has watched the Hugo crowd slowly kill the genre I love, let me give you all a bit of advice. It’s okay to move on. Healthy, even. The Iron Age is going to be needing the space soon anyway.