Leaked emails show organizers of the prestigious Hugo Awards vetted writers’ work and comments with regard to China, where last year’s awards were held.

Leaked emails show organizers of the prestigious Hugo Awards vetted writers’ work and comments with regard to China, where last year’s awards were held.

Organizers of the Hugo Awards, one of the most prominent literary awards in science fiction, excluded multiple authors from shortlists last year over concerns their work or public comments could be offensive to China, leaked emails show.

Questions had been raised as to why writers including Neil Gaiman, R.F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer had been deemed ineligible as finalists despite earning enough votes according to information published last month by awards organizers. Emails released this week revealed that they were concerned about how some authors might be perceived in China, where the Hugo Awards were held last year for the first time.

  • @randon31415@lemmy.world
    5•9 months ago

    Same way Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the labor party: Only those with paid memberships can vote on stuff (e.g. where the awards will be presented in the future). China paid for enough new memberships to flood the vote with people that voted to hold it in China.

    • @Guntrigger@feddit.ch
      5•9 months ago

      Weird comparison. I don’t think the least Tory-lite leader of the Labour Party in the last 30 years was voted in as a Chinese conspiracy, as you are implying.

      • @randon31415@lemmy.world
        1•9 months ago

        No, China didn’t have anything to do with Corbyn. Just, right before he took control of the party, the party leaders tried to vote him out. There are over 10 million labor voters, but at the time there were only 100,000 paid labor memberships, who were responsible for voting in the party leader. Corbyn got 50,000 (out of the 10 million) new paying members on the rolls and went over night from being on the edge of being expelled to becoming the party leader.

        Same thing happened here: a very large group (all scifi readers) assuming that paying members would have ideals proportional to the larger group - but that smaller group can be manipulated through a large influx of single issue voters.

        • @Guntrigger@feddit.ch
          0•9 months ago

          Firstly, I’m not really sure where you are getting your figures. There were 200,000 paid members under the previous leader and it went up to 600,000 just before he was elected.

          Secondly, it seems like you’re attributing this sharp increase to a third party nefarious action. I would assume that it were simply a larger portion of those 10m voters deciding to register membership in order to vote in a leader more in tune with their party values.

          I take the point that a small group only needing paid membership to vote is open to manipulation. However, I don’t really see a comparison between these two events.

          • @randon31415@lemmy.world
            2•9 months ago

            I misremembered the number of members - looks like it went up much more drastically than I recalled. And I never said that either were “nefarious actions”, just that a huge influx of new voters with different opinions can alter outcomes.