Brian Smart

Readers may find it odd that Stellar Nursery Media would have something to say about the annual Hugo prize.  As a publishing company, we are concerned about what happens in our industry.  Especially when it is about science fiction, our primary market and readership.  Turns out the process to award the latest Hugo was… questionable at best, corrupt at worst.

Why would we care?  Well, the Hugo is one of two major awards for creative works in science fiction (the other being the Nebula award given by the non-profit Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association).  Receiving a Hugo was once a great honor.  After all, sci-fi fans voted and their consensus proclaimed the work stood above all other science fiction in that category.  Fame, fortune, honor would be bestowed upon the Hugo recipients. 

Nonsense.  The Hugo has been exclusionary and elitist since it was first awarded in 1953.

Let’s start off with the organization itself.  Note that we didn’t say “award” anywhere near Hugo.  That’s because “Hugo” and “award” together are service marked.  You know, that silly SM that’s stuck up like this^SM.   The service mark is held by the World Science Fiction Soc… nope, can’t use that “society” word either because those four words together are service marked as well.  Considering it isn’t even a registered non-profit organization anywhere, it’s remarkable they could service mark anything.  Somehow they did, so… to prevent any infringement lawsuit, let’s just call it the Hugo prize given annually by the WSFS.

You will hear arguments that the Hugo is fan-based, that only fans can vote on the limited selection of science fiction works.  That is true… ish.  Simple fact is that since its creation in 1939, the WSFS has been a pay-to-play organization.  The Hugo is simply an extension of that elitism.  If you can afford to pay the one-time annual membership (only good for a year) and special supplement to attend the annual convention, then you can vote on the Hugo nominees.  Guess that makes you – by their definition – a science fiction fan.  As a fan, your vote helps decide what works are the most deserving of a Hugo.

The rest of us– those who can’t afford the membership, supplement, and travel to the convention – well, by lack of our presence, we simply aren’t fans.  At least according to how WSFS works and how the Hugo nominees and finalists are decided.  Not sure what that makes us… perhaps sci-fi observers?  Un-fans or non-fans?  Non-voting lower class fans?  Rather arrogant that the WSFS claims the name fan for all of us, isn’t it. 

So any talk about inclusion or diversity by this organization is… well, we aren’t certain how they can say it with a straight face.  If you aren’t at the convention, you can’t vote.  Since only “fans” can vote on the Hugo nominations, the rest of us don’t count.  And yes, the WSFS has had some roiling disagreements and arguments about inclusion and diversity.  See BookRiot’s online articles here, here and here.

The next convention, to be held in Glasgow in 2024, costs 210 Pounds for membership and supplement.  That’s $264 for us Yanks.  Add to that an airline ticket, lodging, transportation and meals for the five-day event and you’ll start to see how the one-year WSFS “membership” is elitist.  Most fans cannot afford that kind of vacation.  It’s a business trip so you can vote – as a fan – on the Hugo nominations.  After all, the majority of WSFS’s original founders were publishing companies.  Businesses, not fans.

Stellar Nursery Media never expects any of our published books will ever be considered for a Hugo.  We simply don’t circulate in that kind of social upper atmosphere.  It would be like a poor minority living in a 1950s town waiting for the local Country Club elite to select them as Citizen of the Year.  Yeah, right.  Like that’s ever going to happen.  WSFS can’t even choose their own member’s sci-fi work without being corrupted by politics and scandal.

The most recent fiasco just became public.  Here is what happened.  The 2023 convention was held in Chengdu, China.  How China managed to win the right to hold the convention was questionable to begin with.  At the 2021 convention, ballots were cast for the country who would hold the 2023 convention.  China won with tons of ballots.  Problem was, the ballots only had email addresses, not physical addresses.  Can you say ballot stuffing, anyone?  Yet the Committee decided it was all legal and China was given the go-ahead.

If you don’t know anything about China, it is an authoritarian communist country.  Simple rights like freedom of speech are highly controlled… there are laws against saying anything negative about the country, party, and leadership.  In order not to run afoul of those laws, the WSFS committee put together dossiers on the Hugo nominees.  They looked back a decade to see if the writer or their work had said anything negative about China, visited any controversial location like Tibet or Taiwan, or were Chinese and likely to run afoul of Chinese anti-dissident laws.

Here is an excerpt from a recent article by Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford:

Paul Weimer would eventually be deemed “not eligible” for the award despite meeting eligibility requirements in the constitution of the World Science Fiction Society, which lists the rules governing the Hugo Awards. Among the concerns Jones raised about Weimer’s writings were him having traveled to Tibet, him having a Twitter discussion with Jeannette Ng about Hong Kong along with mentioning Hong Kong and Tiananmen Square on that social media platform, expressing support for the Chengdu Worldcon while also sharing negatives about the Chinese government in a Patreon article, and writing a review of S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws where Jones said Weimer praises Huang for “tak[ing] one of the pillars of Chinese literature and reinvent[ing] it as a queer, feminist retelling of an important and nation-defining story.”

Keep in mind that WSFS has pushed for inclusion of LGBTQ+ and minority writers in order to highlight their science fiction accomplishments.  We should mention that China has started to crack down again on what it considers “abnormal sexual behavior”.  In May 2023, Beijing’s LGBT Center closed suddenly, only stating on its website that it would cease operations due to “force majeure”.  

A brief aside here:  We at Stellar Nursery Media believe that the quality of work should be the sole determinant for nomination of any award.  Race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, quality of nose picking or any other criteria not relevant to the writing/art itself is irrelevant.  It’s one of the reasons we’re using the non de plume of Wells Carroll as author of our series “Marauding Stars”.  If the series ever wins an award it will be for the story, nothing else.  We will continue this tradition with every Stellar Nursery Media publication.

Neil Gaimon would also be excluded from the nomination list.  His episode “The Sound of Her Wings” from The Sandman television series was ruled ineligible.  Several Chinese sci-fi writers were deemed ineligible as well, so it wasn’t a Chinese Government Conspiracy.

It was simply a mess.  Folks on the committee, fearful of violating Chinese law, put together an exclusion list.  The members were US and Canadian.  What should be concerning is that representatives of a non-organization that isn’t legally formed in any country put together dossiers on fellow citizens.  They used information available on the internet to restrict an award competition.  While there isn’t anything illegal about that yet… it is unprofessional, immoral and repugnant. 

It’s bad enough when a potential employer surfs your social media presence.  Now we’ll have to watch out for the local Neighborhood Association doing it and discriminating against you.  That’s what it is, plain and simple.  Discrimination.  The Hugo nominees deemed ineligible should sue the individual committee members for it.  If the WSFS were an actual legal organization, the nominees could sue them as well… but it isn’t.

That is why we stand against the WSFS and the Hugo prize.  It is exclusionary and discriminatory, with only fan “members” able to vote on the award.  With the recent fiasco, the ballot process itself is being questioned as is the decision to make some writers ineligible.  The organization isn’t a legally formed body in any country.  Its conduct cannot be forced to comply with any national laws.  It cannot be sued, its officials held to account, or even forced to dissolve.

Let’s put it another way.  Would anyone allow a Cartel organization to hold a convention and offer awards to its members?  There’s no country who would allow it to legally organize, yet it can undoubtedly state that it has fans.  Would that award have any significance to anyone other than those who attended the convention?  Should it?

There is little difference.  The Hugo prize once had meaning.  This latest fiasco has destroyed its reputation, its status and its purpose.  There will always be doubt in any recipient’s mind whether they received the award legitimately… or if there was once again some chicanery in counting the vote. 

It is time for the WSFS to become a legal organization.  It’s time for accountability, structure and bylaws.  Don’t care if it registers as a for-profit corporation or a non-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization.  Either that or dissolve it completely.

Should it become legal, there is one more thing the WSFS must do… they either need to stop claiming that they speak for science fiction fans or they need to open up the voting process to everyone.  We at Stellar Nursery Media have been fans of the sci-fi and fantasy genres for decades.  We’ve never voted for a Hugo nominee.  There are millions like us around the world who haven’t voted for Hugo prize recipients either.  Say that WSFS members voted for the Hugo winners, sure… but stop saying you voted for us.  SF/F fans aren’t exclusive to your rich elite country club.

Continuing the conceit from earlier… we also don’t expect to ever win the Citizen of the Year award.  We’ll never win a Hugo.  We simply aren’t of the same class.  Doesn’t mean our writing isn’t as good or better.  It just means – based on WSFS’s current way of doing things – that we would never get the votes to win.  Not without paying the dues to join the club.  Not without sacrificing personal integrity and accepting an award knowing full well another talented writer might’ve been deemed “ineligible”.

Something stinks in Hugo, indeed.

References:

Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford, The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion, Patreon: Jason Sanford, February 14, 2024; https://www.patreon.com/jasonsanford and https://www.patreon.com/posts/98498779, ebook ePub file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nwf35pmZuOP7HPoKyofujYCSgk-S89F3/view,   PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ko_-_8Gk-2Sw1ydtyhjvsIgJJUXaMtAb/view

Emails provided by Diane Lacey, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_QqmsxQkACoYcxSx2LVqbxD39-DJI_gS/view

Validation spreadsheet, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rhCwKLMydCto6HvXvcqjR553DqrhTfBu/view

Chris M. Barkley, Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #80, File 770 – Mike Glyer’s News of SF Fandom, January 28, 2024; https://file770.com/barkley-so-glad-you-didnt-ask-80/

Jenn Northington, What is Going On With the 2023 Hugo Awards?, BookRiot, January 23, 2024; https://bookriot.com/2023-hugo-awards-controversy/

Alex Acks, What’s Being Done To Fix the Hugo Awards, BookRiot, August 25, 2016; https://bookriot.com/whats-being-done-to-fix-the-hugo-awards/

Chris M. Arnone, The Broken Hugo Awards of 2015, BookRiot, April 8, 2015; https://bookriot.com/broken-hugo-awards-2015/

Victor Chin, China’s Pioneering Gay Rights Group Halts Operations Under ‘Force Majeure’, VOA China, May 22, 2023; https://www.voanews.com/a/china-s-pioneering-gay-rights-group-halts-operations-under-force-majeure-/7101614.html

Glasgow 2024 A Worldcon for Our Futures Registration FAQ, https://glasgow2024.org/for-members/registration-faq/

Glasgow 2024 memberships & tickets, https://glasgow2024.org/for-members/memberships-and-tickets/

Membership/How to Join, https://www.wsfs.org/membership/

A Short History of the Hugo Awards Process, https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/a-short-history-of-the-hugo-awards-process/

The Press: Amazing! Astounding!, Time, July 10, 1939; https://web.archive.org/web/20110312100628/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,761661-1,00.html;

“Sold at U. S. newsstands are about a dozen pulp magazines with such titles as Amazing Stories, Astounding Stones, Startling Stories, Strange Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Thrilling Wonder Stones, Unknown, Marvel Science Stories, Weird Tales. In the pulp trade they are known as “pseudo-scientifics” or “scientifiction.” This week in Manhattan this amazing group of publications produced an amazing show: a convention of their fans.”