Hugo Awards controversy
https://file770.com/the-2023-hugo-awards-a-report-on-censorship-and-exclusion/
No surprise to me, but the Hugo awards seem to have a problem with facing the reality of what they are.
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You mean a popularity contest. like ALL awards?
I kid of course. All I can say about the actual shitstorm is that they knew it was a snake when they picked it up.
See also the commentary from John Scalzi. It seems there was some pre-emptive censorship by the convention, which leaves a bad taste. I'm concerned about how the Anglophone SF world will further retreat from other communities.
Not a good situation all round.
I'd seen a brief article about the controversy a couple of weeks ago but nothing in this much depth. I guess I share @clash_bowley 's apparent cynicism about awards in general
The Scalzi post is very good, I hadn't seen that one before
What I find interesting is that people are still responding as if the problem is a few bad apples, rather than grokking that the popularity of the genre has led to institutional corruption, and that for governance to be legitimate something needs to be reworked. I understand why @clash_bowley, and perhaps all of us, are disdainful of awards, but I wonder how we can evaluate quality if we say that all is nothing more than opinion.
Don't have a good answer, but I am more concerned that, for example, the Scalzi article shows no sign of self-analysis as to how he considered Dave McCarty a friend, and presumably now does not, because McCarty exhibited poor judgment. OTOH everyone exhibits poor judgment sometimes (I certainly have many times), but e.g. Scalzi is not so concerned that he himself did so in his evaluation of the bounds of McCarty's judgment. Instead he is interested in who to blame. It's as if everyone thinks that Courts (where judgments that can only be blames, and never validations, are determined to be reality) are good models for human knowledge and decision-making.
Perhaps we need to be more explicit about de-coupling legitimacy and authority, because there is no doubt in my mind that was is driving the angst is the loss of authority of Hugo members and winners to have their opinions declared and aspect of reality due to the loss of the Hugos institutional charisma and legitimacy.
Hm yes some good points. I read Scalzi's disappointment as relating not so much to McCarty's poor judgement as such, but as to his failure to (say) call Scalzi and say something like "hi mate, I can't go into details but you might be getting some bad news" - in other words a betrayal of (what Sclazi thought was) open relationship, rather than the question of judgement itself. But maybe McCarty never thought of Scalzi as a friend anyway and so Sclazi's reaction is more along the lines of "I guess I was wrong about him".
To me, one of the key points was that the judges - predominantly western - did not actually base their decisions on explicit and clear guidelines from the Chinese government or anyone else, but on their own presuppositions about the kinds of things that said government might disapprove of. So this (IMHO) is what takes it from being an actual authoritarian coercion into a personal collaboration with the idea of coercion - a kind of codependency, if you like.
Of course this has a lot of historical precedent in the west - a lot of religious behaviour is based on the "a hedge around the Torah" principle, where one avoids not only the things that are actually forbidden, but a host of other things that might be getting dangerously close. Then you have to ask "how thick is that hedge and why has that particular thickness been chosen?" And here we see it in the context of award judgement rather than religion, which is no great surprise really.
> To me, one of the key points was that the judges - predominantly western - did not actually base their decisions on explicit and clear guidelines from the Chinese government or anyone else, but on their own presuppositions about the kinds of things that said government might disapprove of. So this (IMHO) is what takes it from being an actual authoritarian coercion into a personal collaboration with the idea of coercion - a kind of codependency, if you like.
Interesting. But the governance of the Hugos is a matter of institutional authority, and the basis for these people to act as they did was the authority delegated to them by the Hugos, not the authority of their own persons, and so the fault must in great part be placed upon the Hugos. That means all the members of the institution are responsible for this, not only a few of them. Perhaps only a few of them are blameworthy, but they are all responsible.
And that's the crux of the matter for me. Because just as the Chengdu committee claimed they were not responsible, and so not blameworthy, I now see these vocal members of the Hugos using the same method to avoid responsibility by seeking to blame a different authority for their own failures of governance.
"Members of the Hugos"? I'm not sure what you mean by that. The World SF Society doesn't have a great deal of structure or controlling officers. It has something to protect the "Worldcon" trademark and a process to shunt all substantive decision making to the individual Worldcons. AFAIK, there are no "members of the Hugos" other than the Worldcon organisers and the general mass of SF fans (who've attended the last convention or two).
Now, it could be that the Hugos have become commercially significant enough that this relaxed organisation isn't sufficient to provide the governance needed. But that's a different thing from saying a group that doesn't exist should take responsibility.
The only awards I give any credence to these days are panelled (not necessarily by experts, but at least thoughtful people one hopes) and everyone on the panel must read the entire shortlist. These sort of ‘cast your vote’ awards where the people who vote might be quite ignorant of some of the entries are a waste of time. This means Hugos, Ennies, Goodreads, and I’m sure many more.
Bingo