It’s out in the open now: Legitimate Hugo Award candidates were disqualified because of Chinese censorship. A collection of internal email, posted on Document Cloud, shows that the committee reviewed “anything of a sensitive political nature.” Dave McCarty was specific about the reasons:

In addition to the regular technical review, as we are happening in China and the *laws* we operate under are different … we need to highlight anything of a sensitive political nature in the work. [Ellipses in the original]

The nature of such works “needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot of [sic] if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it.”

The discussions note that it’s the Chinese fans running the con who stood to get hurt. Another writer commented that “we’re talking about the safety of our Chinese con-running friends when we’re making these evaluations.”

As I’ve said many times, the failure of the Chengdu Worldcon was inevitable from the beginning. I don’t know whether McCarty knew it all along or was naively surprised that China practices widespread censorship. If he knew it all along and intended to comply, he was engaging in deception. If he was astonished by the discovery, the only honest thing he could do would be to withdraw from the process. Either way, his subsequent stonewalling made it worse.

The censorship ruined only the 2023 Hugo Awards, but the cover-up has cast a longer shadow, which the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon is trying to deal with. The 2023 winners should consider giving back their awards. It’s not as if anyone will want to boast about being “Winner of the 2023 Hugo Award!”

Update: Today (Feb. 17) I came upon Diane Lacey’s open letter, which says a lot about the situation and makes McCarty look even worse. She has since resigned out of regret from the organization bidding for a 2027 Worldcon in Canada.