R F Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Neil Gaiman were ruled ineligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards in 2023 despite receiving enough nominations.
I’d say it’s actually pretty explicable
Feel free to enlighten those of us who are out of the loop.
All three authors have criticised the CCP in the past. The awards were held in Chengdu, land ot pandas , spicy food , and snowflake leadership. Two of the authors are from international Chinese diaspora . The snowflakes running the country are incredibly sensitive to what ethnic han Chinese outside China - especially in public spheres - say about them. They threw Gaiman in for good measure ( atleast theyre consistent which is kind of surprising). This is just another small measure of softpower being exerted. Any author with reliance on that market is either self censoring or prepared to not have access to it. So clearly its what Hugo did in order to leave in one piece. Mustve been some interesting conversations go on.
It’s like the Hugo’s are trying their hardest to become irrelevant
Yeah, because we westerners are more important than the billion Chinese when you want to make money.
Writing on Facebook, Gaiman said: “Until now, one of the things that’s always been refreshing about the Hugos has been the transparency and clarity of the process… This is obfuscatory, and without some clarity it means that whatever has gone wrong here is unfixable, or may be unfixable in ways that don’t damage the respect the Hugos have earned over the last 70 years.”
I don’t like Neil Gaiman, I find his writing a bit repetitive and his personality is a little grating. But are these other two authors any good? I’m always looking for new science fiction authors to get into, and quite liked Cixin Liu if these have been translated from Mandarin.
R F Kuang is American and Xiran Jay Zhao is Canadian. They write in English.
Oh, if they were good I’d probably have heard of them then?
There was a time you’d never heard of any of your favourite writers. But then you did and you enjoyed them. If you’d dismissed them with a “how good could they be if I’ve never heard of them?” you’d never have discovered them. Don’t be a twit.
I’m not being a twit, I’m being obnoxious on the internet to amuse myself while I have a virus. I imagine I will check out both of the authors mentioned.
