Hugo Awards controversy

[Clint_L]

Mindless Capitalism wins the day again or something like that

I put time and thought into my comments, which do not mention capitalism at all, and this is your response. Are you even worth having a conversation with? Are you just here to troll? I'd appreciate clarification so that I can out you on ignore, if the latter. If the former, convince me by adding something positive to the discussion. Perhaps explain how you think that my argument against supporting the ideologically-driven, government-mandated censorship of science fiction and fantasy is the same as "mindless capitalism wins the day." I'm interested in reading that thesis.

 

[Clint_L]

What do you mean by "allowed"? How are you (or anybody else) going to stop another country from hosting an event? Especially a country the size of China?

In this case, you stop them by not holding the Hugo awards there. Seems pretty straightforward. When they apply, you explain that this ceremony is intended to celebrate and facilitate the best of free expression in science fiction and fantasy, and those ideals are not currently consistent with the practices of the current government of China, such as investigating and censoring authors and texts for LGBTQ+ content, as was apparently done here.

In the post, the Propaganda Department of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China stated that “Three special groups reviewed the content of 1,512 works in five categories, including cultural and creative, literary, and artistic, that were shortlisted in the preliminary examination of the Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention, conducting strict checks on works suspected of being related to politics and ethnicity and religion, and putting forward proposals for the disposal of 12 controversial works related to LGBT issues.”

Please feel free to reapply when you strive to uphold rather than reject the ideals that the Hugo awards represent. Holding the Hugos in a China that freely celebrates all that science fiction and fantasy have to offer, and that allows the free participation of everyone, regardless of gender or sexuality, would be amazing.

 

[trappedslider]

I put time and thought into my comments, which do not mention capitalism at all, and this is your response. Are you even worth having a conversation with? Are you just here to troll? I'd appreciate clarification so that I can out you on ignore, if the latter. If the former, convince me by adding something positive to the discussion. Perhaps explain how you think that my argument against supporting the ideologically-driven, government-mandated censorship of science fiction and fantasy is the same as "mindless capitalism wins the day." I'm interested in reading that thesis.

I'm assuming that the attendees spend money, the more population (local or not) that shows up means more money is spent and not just on the worldcon event itself regardless of what kind of government.

I'm sure it will be easier to get the economic numbers from next year's event and from what I can gather due to the passalong program the next three worldcons will get 50% of any surplus from Chengdu.

So with a record attendance of 20,000 for both in-person and online numbers meaning you'd be looking at an amount somewhere between 50 and 100 million USD just for the con itself. Then add in the hotels and other sight seeing from attendees and family members, food etc it goes up even more.

I've lived in a tourist trap town, and the biggest draw is the International UFO festival, so direct and knock on spending is something I know a bit about since it's something that gets discussed every time planning for the event comes up.

 

[EKovarr]

I spent several hours drafting and editing a post, doing some research for things I'd forgotten, etc. A lot of explanation. What WSFS is, what Worldcons are, all carefully written in service of getting people on the same page, how it boils down to what's basic:

There is no they. "They" don't exist, just fans.

WSFS doesn't exist either. "WSFS" and related are registered service marks. Protecting them requires year round vigilance: a handful of fans volunteer to do it. That's it.

The first World Science Fiction Convention was in 1939: a bunch of fans decided fans should have a time and place to meet each other. 85 years later and it's the same. Fans volunteer so fans can get together. Anything needs to be decided, fans make the decision.


Before posting it I read through everything and discovered that pretty much all of this has already been covered. The usual thing, fans putting effort in for fans. Gamers, Worldcon folks, people who do or don't go to conventions, people who read SF, whomever. So I started over, boiling things down to what's basic.

Which includes what's important here: massive appreciation for Umban, dragoner, Autumnal, probably others, the fans who put in the effort. AbdulAkgazred for a different reason: he stuck his neck out. He disagreed with the assumption that the Chinese government is the same as Chinese people. Including that they know that it's really stupid to express any disagreement with it.

"We now return you to your regularly scheduled program already in progress."

 

[Deset Gled]

...What WSFS is, what Worldcons are, all carefully written in service of getting people on the same page, how it boils down to what's basic:

There is no they. "They" don't exist, just fans.

WSFS doesn't exist either. "WSFS" and related are registered service marks. Protecting them requires year round vigilance: a handful of fans volunteer to do it. That's it.

The first World Science Fiction Convention was in 1939: a bunch of fans decided fans should have a time and place to meet each other. 85 years later and it's the same. Fans volunteer so fans can get together. Anything needs to be decided, fans make the decision.

I have a couple of issues with this.

First, what you are describing is very literally "they". We understand that there is less formal/strict leadership, which means that there is no one person in charge. Just groups of people, just a bunch of fans. Which means that the organization is, de facto, "they". That's the word we use in English to cover exactly the situation you are describing.

Second, we have names. Dave McCarty, Diane Lacey, Chris Barkley, Jason Sanford, just to start. We have emails. You can't claim there's just some amorphous blob of anonymous people when we literally have the correspondence of some of the individuals responsible, discussing the choices they made and actions they personally took. We know the list isn't complete. We know these people weren't responsible for everything. We know there were others involved at multiple levels. But the fact that there are other people involved doesn't absolve any of these individuals of the roles they played.

Third, this is not a solution. It offers no hope, no direction for change. It does not help. Frankly, this is just more minimizing.

Finally, the situation you are describing is what I meant in my last post when I said these were systematic issues that will require systematic responses. If there was a single person in charge, we could point to that person, or to a specific failure. The fact that the organization is just "a bunch of fans" is why the entire process needs to be re-examined if you want to stop this from happening again. But if you try to hide behind the anonymity of "just fans", if you want to just pretend this was a "one off", it guarantees the situation (or a worse one) will eventually happen again.

 

[demoss]

There is a huge risk of falling into a "technological fixes for social issue" fallacy here, but I would go for something like:

1. Require use of specific vote tallying software, including a voting website. No more DIY, or at the very least require it to be open source and available.
2. Require documenting specific reasons for ineligibility.
3. Require publishing results, reasons for ineligibility that dropped works from shortlist, and statistics all at the same time. (Possibly even full voting data? Would be nice, but it gives me an itchy feeling.)
4. Allow publishers and authors to file protests for their ineligibility. (With same con? With next con? With the society board?) If the protest is accepted after the fact, then the work is automatically shortlisted the following year.

I don't think any of 1-3 is an onerous requirement.

#4 is borderline, because it is a substantive change that creates new work, instead of just adding transparency to existing work. While the number of "would have been shortlisted, but was deemed ineligible" works is limited, and presumably most would not be protested, the channel for protests still needs to be created, monitored, protests studied, decisions made and published... all of which takes time and effort.

I would also dearly like some pseudo-objective human rights benchmark for hosting countries, but there are no easy universally acknowledged metrics, so I don't think that is going to happen. Giving some body the option to refuse a bid for human rights reasons would be an option, but I don't think anyone wants to be in that seat. (Personally I think "allows death penalty" would be a pretty good proxy for human rights, but even if it was written in a way that distinguishes states from countries I don't think it would pass.)

At the end of the day, the bids that convince the fans will win, and human rights will matter exactly as much as the fans care about them.

 

[trappedslider]

At the end of the day, the bids that convince the fans will win, and human rights will matter exactly as much as the fans care about them.

Unless China has a spot on the 2026 location list, this uproar will not really amount to anything truly meaningful and if it does have a spot then the furor will come back but given that folks KNEW before how China operates and it still managed to hold the con, unless it's disqualified or there's a massive grassroots to rig the vote it will be in China again at some point.

 

[Autumnal]

On the other hand, the only well-organized bid for 2026 is in Uganda. Which, to put it mildly, the source of some other problems. Including capital punishment for being queer.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

On the other hand, the only well-organized bid for 2026 is in Uganda. Which, to put it mildly, the source of some other problems. Including capital punishment for being queer.

Oye! In some sense it would be amazing for these kinds of events to be held in Africa. On the other hand, having spent some time in Nairobi, it boggles the mind to just imagine the logistical challenges. The sheer insanity of thousands of fans in a place where public transit is lethally unsafe... I mean, getting around in a place like that, the people are great, but you have to be super careful.

Oh, and forget the trash cans, there ain't no services of any kind that work reliably! You're bringing your own power, lol. Well, maybe not in Kampala, haven't been there.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

For those closer to WC organizing: is it possible that the backlash for this WorldCon is not creating fertile ground for sites/cities/fandoms to step up to host future WCons?

While not salting the earth, it's more like open tillage. Unless someone's going to add a bunch of fertilizer, is it possible in a few years WCs may die for lack of sites?