On January 20th, one day later than the WSFS Constitution allows, we have finally been given the Hugo Award voting and nominating stats from Chengdu Worldcon 2023. And there are anomalies. A lot of anomalies. I'll do my best to sum up what's going wrong and add lots of links to other, much smarter people who have analyzed certain parts of the data in more detail. This is going to be a long post, so get yourself a cup of your preferred beverage and make yourself comfortable.
Everything about the Hugo Awards 2023 was unusual, starting from the very late announcement of the finalists. I'm not even going to go into the change of dates and veue o the convention itself. That is a whole different beast. I will stay focused on the Hugo Awards which were given out in late October 2023. Normally, the voting and nominating statistics are released right after the awards ceremony because the data is there anyway - otherwise there coulnd't be any winners, now could there? This year, we had to wait quite a while for the first part of the stats to be released, which showed us the voting details. Those were interesting insofar as a lot of works won in the very first round. Most of the time, it takes a few rounds in the instant run-off voting to determine the winner, but okay. Sometimes a work is just so beloved that it wins right off the bat. Let's say that the Hugo voters were more unanimous in 2023 than we tend to be.
The waiting time for the nominating details was much longer. In fact, it took Chengdu Worldcon the entire 90 day period allowed by the WSFS Constitutaion to finally release the data. Many of us were curious where certain works had ended up, especially ones like R. F. Kuang's Babel which a lot of us expected to see on the shortlist. Babel's absence is only the tip of the iceberg, however. It was deemed "ineligible" without further explanation as to what supposedly renders it ineligible. It was published in the correct year, it's SFF, and a ton of people (myself included) had nominated it for a Hugo Award.
Several other works and people were also excluded as ineligebly, when it is difficult to understand what the reasons for that decision might be. Paul Weimer, to give the most glaring example, is not only a fan writer (and has been for many years) who has been nominated for Hugos before, he has also written during 2022, and been nominated by a considerable number of people. Nobody knows quite why he should not be eligible for this particular Hugo Award, himself included! What's more, he has not been contacted to clarify any eligibility issues, and was just now made aware that he would have made the shortlist.
For the Astounding Award, Xiran Jay Zhao was deemed ineligible even though they are eligible. They were a finalist last year, which makes the 2023 Hugos the second year of their Astounding eligibility. It even says so explicitly on the Astounding Awards website. I have been told that they featured a Uyghur Muslim character in one of their books (which I haven't read, so I can't speak to how prominently that character features). I'll let us all come up with our own conclusions as to why Zhao may have been "ineligible" for this award.
A Sandman episode was eliminated as ineligible, for no discernible reason. Due to a rule that states if both an episode of a TV show and the entire season are nominated in their respective categories (Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form and Long Form), then only the work with more nominations may remain. Sandman Season 1 as a whole was excluded due to this rule because the individual episode had garnered more nominations. That is perfeclty fine, but by the same rule, the nominated episode "The Sound of Her Wings" should have remained on the ballot and been a finalist. It was, however, marked as ineligible. Nobody knows why.
R. F. Kuang has since posted a statement that sums things up pretty well.
There are quite a few other issues with the voting details. First and foremost the fact that Babel's points never change, despite other books being eliminated and the points from their ballots being re-allocated (due to EPH - E Pluribus Hugo (google it, it's too complicated to explain in a quick side note)). That's... odd, to say the least.
Now, it might be possible that not one single person who nominated any of the works that were eliminated also nominated Babel but we know of several people who have commented on other posts (over at Camestros Felapton's blog or on Facebook and Reddit), who did in fact nominate both Ray Nayler's book and R. F. Kuang's book, as well as some others who nominated both A Half-Build Garden and Babel. So once Emrys's and Nayler's novels were eliminated, the numbers for Babel should have shifted at least a bit. According to these nominating details, they didn't.
And in case you think they just ignored the re-allocation of points because Babel was "ineligible" anyway, the points did change for Xiran Jay Zhao when other people on their ballot were eliminated. Same for the Sandman episode. So that's not it.
Let's not even talk about the fact that some categories show a finalist twice (In the Serpent's Wake in the Lodestar category), one of which was corrected at least (in Best Novelette). Rachel Hartman's YA novel would have made the ballot either way, but considering how long this WorldCon took to release the data, couldn't we expect them to at least have checked it for mistakes?
Another highly unusual thing that I wouldn't even have noticed, had cleverer people not drawn my attention to it, is the strange distribution of nominations across the longlist. In almost all categories, the top entries have very large nominating numbers and then there's this sudden drop-off, called a cliff. I'll let Heather Rose Jones explain it, with pretty graphs and everthing. The TL:DR version of the (highly interesting) post is: the data is anomalous, even compared to a Puppy year. I urge you to read her post, however, as it is truly eye-opening. The graphics help see how weird everything appears to be even if you're not a numbers person (I am most definitely not a numbers person 🙂 )
Best Series is a great exaple of how odd these numbers are. Look at the huge difference between the finalists and the first series under the cut (which I nominated, it's a great series):
The cherry on top is that, in Best Novel, Best Short Story, and Best Fan Writer, the number of points exceeds the number of total ballots, which should be impossible (one ballot = one point, distributed among however many works are on that ballot). It makes you wonder why they released the nominating data at all or why they didn't fake it better to make it look legitimate.
There are several theories floating around the internet as to what exactly has happened here, but whichever one may be closest to the truth, it is obvious that shenanagigans have happened and the data has been tampered with. Even if we ascribe the strange cliff and the unusually unanimous nominating stats to honest mistakes (although I can't imagine just how that would happen), there remains the question of the works and people that were excluded as ineligible when no reasons or explanations are given.
Speaking of explanations and people demanding them. Dave McCarty definitely showed his true colors when fans asked on his Facebook page whether he could give more insight as to the eligibility rulings. He answered very reasonable questions with a non-answer (which I suspect is all we're ever going to get):
After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.
Dave McCarty
When people asked for clarification, he called them "slow" and chose a very unfriendly tone to communicate. It was only when Neil Gaiman came in that McCarty sounded slightly more friendly again, although no more information was given.
I am devastated for the authors and works that were taken off the ballot on which they rightfully belonged. One can only imagine how the winners feel about their Hugo Award, when they know that the finalist ballot might have looked very different. I certainly hope they still know the are deserving of their award, even though I can also understand if the win comes with a bad aftertaste.
As someone who has been nominating and voting in the Hugos for a decade now, this blatant manipulation of what should be a democratic process makes me very concerned. The calm half of my brain is thinking about how to prevent things like this happening in the future, how we can ensure that local laws and censorship don't affect the awards, and how to do all that without excluding anyone from hosting WorldCon. It's a tough question that I have no answer to but I do have hopes for the upcoming Business Meeting in Glasgow.
The emotional side of my brain mostly calls me an idiot. As soon as Chengdu won the bid for Worldcon, some people said that we could expect censorship, we could expect certain "undesirable" people and works to be left off the ballot even though they were nominated, and so on. I dismissed all that, I thought it was racist and biased and unacceptable. Like a fool, I trusted that the Hugo Awards were both not important enough for that kind of tampering, and at the same time too important to the people administering them to mess with. Consider me chastened.
Where do we go from here? I don't know.
I can't imagine that anything will be done about the 2023 Hugo Awards, and I honestly don't think we should do a re-run or re-count or what have you. The best idea I've heard so far is to have WorldCon continue handing out the Hugo Awards but to instate a separate committee that takes care of the administration of the awards (noinations, votes, etc.), no matter where WorldCon is held. This committee then could not be influenced by local laws. I don't know about other Hugo voters, but I certainly don't want to follow an award that excludes people and works willy-nilly because the convention happens to be held in a place that hates entire groups of people, whether they be part of the LGBTQIA+ community, follow a certain religion, or belong to a certain ethnic group. This is an SFF award that thrives on diversity, and I would like it to continue doing so!
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