The Hugo Awards voting results have been released and some eyebrows have been raised by patterns in the data and the disqualification of works by RF Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao. The discussion on File770 has been interesting:
There are no WSFS administrators. WSFS has no officers or staff. It consists of the membership of the current Worldcon, and we members only act via the Business Meeting held at Worldcon itself, and by voting for the Hugos and in Site Selection. #WSFS#Worldcon
Basically: each Worldcon agrees to award the awards in accordance with those rules, after it is selected by a vote of the current WSFS membership to run the actual World Science Fiction Convention. Chengdu, conducted in the People's Republic of China, agrees to allow the PRC government to remove nominees, and it seems that they did so. jayblanc explains that well here: https://www.tumblr.com/jayblanc/740063067189198848/chinese-censorship-of-the-2023-hugo-award
Because there is no permanent structure of any kind associated with WSFS, other than the Mark Protection Committee, there is no mechanism to enforce its rules. I have proposed to Glasgow (this year's Worldcon) that it allow some sort of special Hugo to be voted for the works unfairly excluded last year, but I doubt that they will. For one thing, it would be enormously difficult and very controversial.
Hey, @KevinStandlee , you know way more than I do. Am I close?
Thanks for your really educational response. It makes a lot more sense how this happens. It seems a shame for private organizations to put any local political leaders in a place to veto an arts award.
As Kevin wrote elsewhere, the Worldcon is not above the law. They have to obey Chinese censorship just like movie studios or Facebook or other people and organizations in China.
@nitpicking Certainly. No issue here with following the law. I do take issue with holding a global art awards process in a locality where the government is widely known to be extremely censorious. Maybe tying it to a location at all is a flawed process, particularly in our globally connected world.
As I say, I was part of a competing bid. I was not in favor of Chengdu and did not attend. (I was automatically a member, due to the way site selection works. If you vote in the election, you are a member of the winning event.)
@nitpicking ah, very interesting. I’ve been a long time SFF reader but I haven’t really paid attention to the mechanics of how the awards were given. I’ll have to do some reading so I can form a better opinion. Thanks for your willingness to explain.
@KevinStandlee@ausir@adam@nitpicking That's probably a good thing. Even the more secular muslim nations are probably uncongenial for much of worldcon-going fandom.
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