The Hugo Awards Controversy

The Hugo Awards are one of the most prestigious literary awards for fantasy and science fiction, and on Jan. 20th, the voting statistics for the 2023 awards were released to the public. If you have been anywhere near the science fiction or fantasy side of social media, you will know that these statistics have sparked questions about the legitimacy of the awards and their winner selection process.

The Hugo Awards are given to literary works published the  previous year and are chosen and presented by members of the World Science Fiction Convention. The location of the convention changes every year, and in 2023, it was located in Chengdu, China. Many speculate that the location of the awards in 2023 led to possible censorship of the awards due to China’s history of strict control over state media.

According to the World Science Fiction Convention constitution, the Hugo Awards committee has up to 90 days after the awards to release the voting statistics. The statistics are typically released promptly after the awards, but this year the committee released the data exactly 90 days after the awards were held. 

When the voting statistics were released, many science fiction and fantasy fans were surprised to see the works of R. F. Kuang, Neil Gaiman, Xiran Jay Zhao, and many others deemed “ineligible” for the awards despite their high vote counts. As of now, the Hugo Awards have yet to provide reasons for the ineligibility of these works.

The most notable novel that was considered “ineligible” for the awards was New York Times Best Selling author R. F. Kuang’s Babel. The novel previously won other prestigious science fiction and fantasy awards, the Nebula and Locus, and it seems Kuang was also not told why her book was not eligible for the Hugo Award.

“I wish to clarify that no reason for Babel’s ineligibility was given to me or my team. I did not decline a nomination, as no nomination was offered,” Kuang wrote in an Instagram post.

While she was not given a reason for Babel’s seeming “ineligibility,” Kuang has her speculations.

“I assume this was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility. Excluding ‘undesirable’ work is not only embarrassing for all involved parties, but renders the entire process and organization illegitimate,” Kuang wrote.

What confuses many about Babel’s disqualification is that it meets all the requirements to be nominated for a Hugo Award. It was published in the United States in the year preceding the Hugo Awards, was not previously published, and is in the science fiction and fantasy genre. Thus, fans believe that the Chinese government deemed that the novel’s anti-authoritarian and anti-imperialist messages were too critical of the ruling party. 

Similarly, Xiran Jay Zhao’s best-selling novel Iron Widow was also disqualified. Zhao was listed as an eligible author for the awards, but they did not receive any reasoning as to why their work was no longer considered eligible. Members of the science fiction and fantasy community speculate that mentions of China’s only female empress and members of the Uyghur ethnic group in Iron Widow are what led to its possible censorship.

However, it is not just the works of members of the Chinese diaspora that have been deemed “ineligible.” Most notable is an episode of Neil Gaiman’s television show The Sandman. The writer took to Facebook questions regarding the ineligibility of his work.

In response to Gaiman’s questions, Hugo Awards administrator Dave McCarty wrote a now deleted Facebook reply, “The only statement from the administration team that I can share is the one that I already have—after we reviewed the constitution and the rules we must follow, we determined the work was not eligible.”

While McCarty refused to elaborate any further, he did refute claims that the Chinese government was involved in the Hugo Award voting and nomination process.

“I have seen a few people suggest that government officials told us what to do, but such was not the case. The Hugo administration team, with me at the head, made all the eligibility determinations,” McCarty told Publishers Marketplace. 

Despite McCarty’s responses, Gaiman seems to agree with public sentiment and the previously written words of Kuang. 

“Until now, one of the things that's always been refreshing about the Hugos has been the transparency and clarity of the process,” Gaimain wrote on Facebook. “This is obfuscatory, and without some clarity it means that whatever has gone wrong here is unfixable, or may be unfixable in ways that don't damage the respect the Hugos have earned over the last 70 years.”

Until the Hugo Awards provides a detailed explanation of why the works of these writers were deemed ineligible, it seems that distrust in the awards and its administration team will only continue to grow.

by ALLISON MA