Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards Crossword Clue

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SCIENCE FICTION WRITER TED WITH FOUR HUGO AWARDS Crossword Answer

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  • Landmark on which most U.S. radio stations base the starts of their call signs, with "W" on the east and "K" on the west [Algonquin]

Leading science fiction writer Ted Chiang explores technology's impact on writing

Author whose novella was adapted into movie 'arrival' delivers 2024 humanities institute distinguished lecture.

A man sitting in front of an audience smiles

Science fiction author and futurist Ted Chiang smiles during Thursday evening's Humanities Institute Distinguished Lecture at Armstrong Hall on ASU's Tempe campus. Chiang explores complex relationships between science, technology, religion and philosophy in unconventional and insightful ways through his writing. He posed the question about the advancement of communication, starting with the spoken word, progressing to the written word, and evolving into what is next. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU News

Science fiction author Ted Chiang spends a lot of time thinking about language and writing. It’s his livelihood — his work has earned four Hugo and four Nebula awards, among other accolades — but one might argue that language is also a special focus.

His novella “Story of Your Life” — adapted into the 2016 movie “Arrival,” starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner — has at the core of its worldbuilding an alien language that, well, no spoilers, but there’s more to this language and how it affects its users than first appears.

So it wasn’t a surprise that language was the focus of Chiang’s remarks Thursday evening at Arizona State University as the 2024 Humanities Institute distinguished lecturer.

He spoke at Armstrong Hall on the Tempe campus about the evolution of speech to writing, calling written language a form of technological breakthrough. First there was speech — a natural biological function — but writing had to be invented and purposefully taught. No one spontaneously learns to read on their own, Chiang said. Writing changed how we use language.

“The bards of ancient Greece used patterns like (rhyme and meter) to improvise their way through thousands of lines of verse,” he said. “... Nowadays, we think of rhythm and meter as primarily decorative features. They’re an important part of pop music, so much so that we have come to associate them with a lack of seriousness, which may be why their role in modern poetry has declined.

“But before writing was widely used, rhyme and meter were essential mnemonic tools. There was no way anyone could have remembered the Iliad and the Odyssey if they consisted of ordinary prose. But now, because we used the written word instead of our memories, rhyme and meter exist mostly for fun.”

He doesn’t think language is done evolving.

“What is the next step beyond writing itself?” he asked, wondering how technology will influence written language in the future.

“What is the cognitive technology that will succeed writing? Suppose it’s 100 years from now or maybe 1,000 years from now, and you are going to give a presentation. What kind of technology are you going to use to help you figure out what you’re going to say?

“I don’t mean a replacement for word processing software. Is there some sort of cognitive technology similar to writing, but better than writing that will help you articulate your thoughts and choose the words you will actually say when you give your presentation? A successor to writing that can only exist in a digital medium?”

Two men on stools speak in front of an audience

A conversation with Matt Bell , director of ASU’s Worldbuilding Initiative and a professor in the Department of English, followed the lecture. Chiang told Bell that he was skeptical about the role of artificial intelligence in creative writing.

“The question of conscious machines is one that I think is super interesting and raises a lot of philosophical questions, like what kind of respect do we owe to conscious machines that we make?” Chiang said.

“… Right now, we’re just dealing with these autocomplete on steroids, and the fact autocomplete on steroids is kind of spookily good is really weird and interesting, and it might be very useful. … But right now, it seems like they’re pretty terrible at every use that people are proposing.

“They’re definitely interesting in terms of what they reveal about the statistical properties of text … but they do not deserve respect. Anyone who tries to claim differently is trying to sell you something.”

Chiang said he hopes technology’s future influence on the written word won’t “dehumanize” its art.

“A lot of people feel that technology is dehumanizing, and there are plenty of situations where I feel that is accurate,” he said.

“But if there is any technology that is humanizing rather than dehumanizing, it is the written word. The written word helps us to be creative, and it helps us to be, and it helps us to reason. And those are the most human of activities.”

About the program

The Humanities Institute’s Distinguished Lecture program brings to ASU a prominent scholar whose work highlights the importance of humanities research. While on campus, speakers discuss humanities trends and participate in informal sessions, allowing ASU colleagues and students to share related research interests. In Chiang's case, his visit included a screening of "Arrival" and film discussion  on Friday, co-sponsored by ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination. 

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The Legendary Ted Chiang on Seeing His Stories Adapted and the Ever-Expanding Popularity of SF

science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

Meghan McCarron Interviews the Sci-Fi Master

science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

Within the world of science fiction, Ted Chiang is legendary. He’s won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, and a staggering number of other honors, all for a body of work numbering about fifteen stories. This is especially remarkable for a genre forged in the pulps, where top writers still regularly publish a raft of short stories and a novel or two yearly. But Chiang’s work is worth the wait. Each story is a carefully considered, masterfully constructed, profoundly moving, and occasionally dangerous machine. He manages to capture the human drama behind philosophical questions, in clear and spare prose that seduces with its simplicity. No matter the genre, he’s one of the best and most dedicated short story writers working today.

Chiang was born in 1967 in Port Jefferson, New York, and received a computer science degree from Brown University. He had been submitting to science fiction magazines since he was in high school, and after he attended the Clarion workshop in 1989, he sold his first story to the legendary Omni . That story, “Tower of Babylon,” also won him his first Nebula award, kicking off his remarkable career. His collection Stories of Your Life and Others , originally published in 2002, has just been re-released by Vintage. The title story is currently being adapted into the film Arrival starring Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams. In other words, if you want to be in on the secret of Chiang’s fiction, now is the time.

I met Ted over a decade ago, when I attended the Clarion West workshop in Seattle. At numerous science fiction conventions and workshops since, I’ve gotten to know him as a thoughtful, ambitious, and endlessly curious writer, as well as a good friend. What I’m saying is, if you’re sitting in a hotel lobby at 1 a.m. and want to debate the nature of language, Ted is always game. He and I spoke over several rounds of email this June.

Meghan McCarron: You published the first story in this collection in 1990, and the collection as a whole was first issued in 2002. Collectively, these stories have won 4 Nebula awards, a Sturgeon Award and a Hugo (and you’ve won even more awards since). What’s it like to look back over your work, and your career from the vantage of 2016?

Ted Chiang: The first thing that strikes me is the change in the status of science fiction over the last twenty-five years. Back when I first started publishing, science fiction was still very much a marginalized genre, and the word “genre” itself had a pejorative connotation. I remember trying to get into a creative-writing class in college and hearing the professor announce that she wasn’t interested in students who wanted to write science fiction or any other genre fiction because the department’s goal was to encourage original writing. The idea that contemporary realistic fiction might itself be a genre was pretty much unthinkable then.

Obviously, there are still plenty of people who dismiss science fiction out of hand nowadays, but there are also plenty of people who pay little attention to the question of genre when looking for fiction to read. Now there are college classes devoted to science fiction; a writer like Nalo Hopkinson can be a professor in creative writing solely because of her work as a science fiction and fantasy author. I didn’t really expect to see such things in my lifetime.

So when I look back on my career, it’s sort of like being a polka musician for a while and then seeing polka music become cool. (To polka fans who are offended at the suggestion that polka is uncool, I apologize.) When I first entered the field, I did so with the expectation that I could only ever reach a niche readership. Now it seems like there’s the potential to reach a more general audience.

McCarron: How do you think your writing has changed over that period? Has your writing been impacted by the growing popularity of science fiction?

Chiang: I don’t know if I’m qualified to say how my writing has changed; that’s probably a judgment for others to make. I haven’t deliberately tried to make my work more accessible to readers who aren’t familiar with science fiction. I do think more general readers have become acquainted with certain reading protocols that were formerly the province of readers of speculative fiction; for example, in the past a lot of people would have been baffled by stories that take place in a world like ours but with a different history than ours, but now that’s pretty standard fare. Readers are more skilled at figuring out the background setting of a story even when it’s not laid out at the beginning, and I’m probably benefiting from that.

McCarron: You and I were recently discussing that we struggle to imagine what we would be like if we had been born in a pre-literate culture, since written words are so embedded in our consciousness. You’ve mentioned in other interviews that Asimov was your first inspiration to write science fiction. But what drew you to reading and writing, period? What’s your relationship with them now?

Chiang: It’s interesting to think about how profoundly we’re a product of the culture we’re raised in, even to the level of our modes of cognition. We’d all like to think there’s something essential about us as individuals that would persist no matter where or when we were born, but so many of the pursuits that define us are entirely culture-specific. Music seems to be found in all cultures, so maybe a musician would be drawn to music no matter what form it took in the culture she was born into, but what would I be drawn to in a culture without the written word? I doubt I’d be a storyteller, because oral storytelling is all about performance and I’m not a performer.

As for what drew me to reading, I was a voracious reader as a child, but there was a period in elementary school when I was more interested in nonfiction than in fiction. I remember reading stacks of books about animals in general and reptiles in particular. I also liked books about strange phenomena, like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. I recall that in the fourth grade, when we were reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler in class, I was also reading In the Wake of Sea Serpents by Bernard Heuvelmans on my own. Wow, I haven’t thought about that book in years. I suppose that was how I satisfied my appetite for strangeness before I discovered science fiction.

Nowadays, I’m distressed to say that my relationship to reading is changing. I’m absolutely still a reader, but I know that my attention span is shorter now because of the internet. The critic Katherine Hayles has proposed a distinction between the “deep attention” used when reading a difficult novel and the “hyper attention” used when switching between many different tasks, and I imagine most of us have felt ourselves shifting from the former to the latter. I wish I were able to stop it.

McCarron: That a shortening attention span is a problem for you is both fascinating and mildly terrifying, because as a writer you’re not active on social media. Where do you spend your time online? Do you see any positives to spending time there?

Chiang: I think the internet has an impact even apart from social media simply because of the way it’s changed our expectations of how often we should expect updates on anything. In the past you got general news every day, but for the latest updates in a specific field you were interested in, you got a magazine once a week or, more likely, once a month. Nowadays you can keep a bunch of browser tabs open on various websites that are being updated on an hourly basis, so you get accustomed to regularly switching tabs and reloading those pages to see what’s new. And of course the articles online are usually shorter than articles in print, so your reading habits adapt. Everyone always had a threshold at which we’d say, “This looks like an interesting article, but it’s kind of long; I’ll save it to read later”; I think the more time we spend online, the lower that threshold becomes.

I’m not sure what the positives of spending time online are, if by “positives” we mean “actually good for you” rather than just “seductive or fun.” I suppose getting frequent news updates makes us feel more connected, either to the world as a whole or to a particular community. I’m conflicted; part of me is definitely technophilic, and as a science-fiction writer it probably also behooves me to have some awareness of internet culture. But I wish I were better at using the internet as a vast library without also using it as a wall of TV screens all tuned to different channels.

McCarron: Your writing process is very distinct, and (from the outside anyway) seems highly systematic. You spend part of the year on freelance technical writing, and part of the year on a short story. I know you tend to do a lot of research, and always write the story’s ending first. What’s your process of composing and revision like? Do you write very differently when you do technical writing?

Chiang: The way it usually works is that I have an idea that I’ve been turning over in my head for a long time: for example, the idea of a world where everyone is engaged in lifelogging. I think about different possible stories set in such a world; I can usually come up with a bunch of starting points, but I don’t know where those would go. It’s only when I come up with an ending that I can actually begin writing; I need to have my destination in mind. I don’t have the whole story worked out in detail, but I have a general sense of what needs to happen. Sometimes I’m able to borrow elements from the other starting points that previously seemed like dead ends to me, although not always. And of course, things evolve over the course of actually writing out the story.

Technical writing is radically different from fiction writing for me; the only thing they have in common is that they draw on the sentence-creation part of my brain. I’m not sure that technical writing has had a direct impact on my fiction, but I think the impulse that originally drew me to technical writing is also one that underlies my fiction, and that is a desire to explain an idea clearly. I think there’s something beautiful about a good explanation; reading one isn’t just useful, it can be pleasurable, too.

McCarron: Relatedly, you tend to bring drafts of your stories to the Sycamore Hill workshop in North Carolina (a peer workshop run by Richard Butner which I’ve also attended). What role do workshops play in your writing process? Your larger writing life?

Chiang: I like to get feedback on my stories before I submit them for publication, and at Sycamore Hill I can get feedback from a lot of smart readers all at once. And of course, spending a week doing nothing but talking to other writers is terrific. Unlike a lot of writers, though, I don’t find workshops useful for motivating me to write by giving me a deadline by which to finish something. On the occasions that I have hurried to finish a story in order to have something to bring to a workshop, the need to meet the deadline caused me to make bad decisions with regards to the story, and I wound up spending more time fixing those mistakes. So now I sometimes decline an invitation to a workshop if I think it would force me to unduly rush the writing process.

McCarron: In addition to Sycamore Hill’s peer-review model, you’ve also experienced the Clarion workshop as a student, and you’ve recently begun teaching there as well. What was your experience as a student? As a teacher?

Chiang: Attending Clarion was a life-changing experience for me. Before Clarion, I hadn’t known anyone who wanted to write science fiction; I barely knew anyone who even read science fiction. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who had read the books I’d read and wanted to talk about the ideas I wanted to talk about. Within days I felt closer to them than to people I’d known through four years of college. I was familiar with science fiction as a literary genre, but Clarion was my introduction to science fiction as a community of people, and it’s hard to fully describe the impact of that.

I recently came back from my second stint teaching at Clarion; it was exhausting, but I had a great time. The caliber of students in recent years has been very impressive, far higher than when I attended, and I’m not sure what the explanation is. Part of it might be that Clarion is better known now and so gets more applicants than it used to, but it also seems that there’s a much greater interest in writing in general nowadays. Even ignoring the explosion in MFA programs, there are lots of classes available online or locally, so people are more likely to have had some experience in writing before attending Clarion.

McCarron: “Story of Your Life” concerns a linguist’s personal transformation in the process of learning an alien language, and now the story is being made into a movie. What has it been like seeing the story transformed into the alien language of film?

Chiang: That’s a good way to put it! Film really is an alien language. Or at least it’s a language that I have some fluency in as a listener, but one that I don’t speak at all. I’ve always been aware of this at some level, but I was definitely reminded of it when I was first approached about the adaptation of “Story of Your Life,” because it’s not a story that I would have ever pitched to be made into a film. And this ties in with what we were saying about how deeply the written word is embedded in our consciousnesses. Because when a story idea crystallizes in my mind, what I’m thinking about are sentences. I assume that if I were a screenwriter, I’d be picturing scenes, and it makes me wonder about how deep are the differences between these two modes of storytelling.

The process of adapting a book for film is also mysterious to me. In particular I’m thinking of the differences between the movie L.A. Confidential and the James Ellroy novel it was based on. I read the novel after seeing the movie, and was really surprised by it. The plot of the movie is fairly complicated, but it’s nothing compared to the vast, sprawling conspiracy in the novel. If I had read the novel first, I would have said it was impossible to adapt into a movie. But what the screenwriters did was take the protagonists of the novel and construct a completely new plot in which those characters could play the same basic roles. The resulting movie is faithful to the spirit of the novel even though it’s radically unfaithful to the text. That’s an approach that would never have occurred to me; I think I’d be too reverent of the original to adapt anything to film.

And then there’s the whole industrial-production side of movies. Based on the tiny bit of the process that I’ve become aware of, making a movie seems like trying to plan the invasion of Normandy and creating a piece of art at the same time. It’s kind of a miracle that any movie turns out well, given the logistical nightmare that’s required to make one. The process for the “Story of Your Life” adaptation has been relatively smooth, I think; not fast — it’s been five years since I was first contacted — but there haven’t been too many cooks involved. It seems like the project has managed to avoid the typical Hollywood disasters you hear about. I’m looking forward to seeing it.

McCarron: Are any of your other stories under option? Or do you have any stories you’d especially like to see interpreted by another medium?

Chiang: I have a couple others stories that have been optioned, but they’re still in the early stages of the development process so it’d be premature to talk about them.

Some years ago I was approached by a director who wanted permission to pitch a cable TV series based on my story “Hell Is the Absence of God.” Again this is not something that would ever have occurred to me, since the story seemed too relentlessly downbeat to ever appeal to a wide audience. But he envisioned a series that focused on people wrestling with questions of faith as they dealt with the repercussions of angelic visitations on their lives, and after some conversations he won me over; it sounded like a series I wanted to watch. The director pitched his idea to a network and they were interested enough to have him to write a pilot script, but eventually they got nervous about the religion angle and decided to pass. The window of opportunity for a TV series of that sort might have closed now that The Leftovers has aired, but I would still be interested in seeing the story adapted into a visual medium.

McCarron: You often describe your work as concerned with philosophical questions, or as a means of exploring scientific ideas or alternate histories. But that obscures how human your characters are. Often a great deal of the tension in your work comes from characters who are self-centered, aggressive, or cruel, and the resolution is often an epiphany resulting in moral growth or peace. Do you see your writing as also possessing a moral dimension?

Chiang: I don’t set out to teach any moral lessons with my fiction, but I also don’t like writing about characters who are, shall we say, doomed. What I’m thinking of are the James Ellroy novels I’ve read (maybe because I mentioned him when answering your earlier question). He often has a protagonist who’s on a path toward self-destruction, but has a moment where he sees an opportunity to redeem himself, and then decides not to take it; he heads toward his doom with full deliberation. I’m not sure I could write a story like that; I can take some of that as a reader, or as a watcher of television, but I doubt I could live in that head space for the time needed to write a story like that myself. I prefer to write about characters who seek redemption when it’s available.

And I suppose that, if abstract philosophical questions were the only thing I was interested in, I’d probably write some form of non-fiction, like speculative essays. But I think philosophical questions are most interesting when they have significant consequences for a person’s life.

McCarron: How do you go about imagining a character who might embody or inhabit the questions you’re concerned with in your stories? You accomplish the uncanny feat of pairing a massive, seemingly unsolvable human question with a specific human perfectly situated to grapple with it.

Chiang: I don’t have a specific procedure that I can describe, but your question does make me think of an idea that I heard from the critic John Clute: the notion that certain scenarios are easily storyable, meaning suited to being told as a story, while others are not. I remember once having a conversation with him during which he noted that climate change, as a topic, was not very storyable. I was inclined to agree, but felt that a lot of ideas don’t seem storyable until someone actually does it. There’s a Greg Egan story called “Luminous” in which the consistency of mathematics has become such a high-stakes matter that the protagonist is on the run from assassins because of it. So I suppose one of the things that interests me as a writer is finding ways to make philosophical questions storyable.

McCarron: Your work has primarily been published in science fiction magazines up until now, though I’d argue your influences run the gamut from Asimov to Borges. What literary tradition do you see yourself in? What contemporary writers do you admire?

Chiang: I definitely see myself as working within the science fiction tradition. Asimov was a huge influence on me when I was young — I read all of his work when I was in junior high and high school — but I wouldn’t say my current writing is very much like his. I didn’t read much Borges until after college, and I’m kind of glad I didn’t; if I had read more of his work earlier, I might have given up on writing out of the conviction that there was no point in trying to do anything in his wake. I’d say it was in college that my writing matured, after I started reading writers like John Crowley and Gene Wolfe. In particular I have to call out Edward Bryant; he’s not well known, but of all the writers I’ve mentioned, I think his work shows the clearest influence on my own.

As for writers of contemporary fiction, let me mention some stories I admire: “Ralph the Duck” by Frederick Busch; “You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore; “Men Under Water” by Ralph Lombreglia; “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro; “Memory Wall” by Anthony Doerr; “Archangel” by Andrea Barrett; and “Medium Tough” by Craig Davidson.

McCarron: Many of these stories concern, on some level, the collision of different cultures or types of consciousness. You also have a significant international following. Has it been particularly interesting to you as a writer to see your stories translated and read by people with different cultural perspectives?

Chiang: I’m fascinated by the question of why a given writer’s work is popular in certain countries but not in others. It’s tempting to look for some generalizations about, say, what Japanese readers like or what German readers dislike, but there are so many different factors at play that I don’t think anyone can say much with real certainty. I have wondered if the fact that my work isn’t steeped in the nuances of American culture makes it easier for readers outside of America to relate to it. On the other hand, lots of very culture-specific novels have been immensely popular in translation, so that hypothesis probably doesn’t hold water. I am conscious of my good fortune to be someone who writes in English, because English works are so often translated into other languages; if I were writing in Swedish, for example, it’s likely no one outside of Sweden would have ever read my work.

McCarron: At some point in every interview with you, the interviewer points out that you’re not particularly prolific. The story under that story, it seems to me, is of your extraordinary grit as a writer. You’ve been submitting work since you were in high school, and fought through years of rejection, and then grappled with the shock of success. And I know writing is something you describe as “hard.” How do you keep going? What’s your advice for people who work slowly?

Chiang: There’s a passage in Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life where she’s telling her neighbor that she hates writing and would rather do anything else, and her neighbor says, “That’s like a guy who works in a factory all day, and hates it.” Writing is so difficult for me that I have often wondered whether I’m actually suited for it, and I’ve had experiences with the publishing industry that made me quit writing for years. But I keep coming back to it because, I suppose, writing is an essential part of who I am. As for advice to slow writers, I’d say that writing is not a race. This isn’t a situation where only the most prolific writers get an audience; publish your story when you’re ready, and it will find readers.

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The Chautauquan Daily

Celebrated author Ted Chiang shares how ‘literature of change’ shapes idea of future

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

Aluminum was once worth more than gold. In 1884, the Washington Monument was capped with aluminum because of its value and durability. Yet today, the metal lines the shelves of Walmart and Wegmans. 

Ted Chiang, a decorated science fiction author of works including Exhalation and Stories of Your Life , said this is a consequence of the almost-daily changes caused by the industrial revolution. The world in which parents raise their children is vastly different than the one in which they themselves were brought up. 

Enter science fiction. True science fiction, Chiang said, is the literature of change.

The winner of four Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, four Locus Awards and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Chiang opened Week Two of the Chautauqua Lecture Series, themed “New Frontiers: Exploring Today’s Unknowns,” at 10:30 a.m. Monday, July 5 in the Amphitheater. During his lecture, titled “Science Fiction and the Idea of the Future,” he explored the differences between fantasy and science fiction, how the industrial revolution has changed how humanity views the future, and his belief in a machine-like universe. 

The differences between science fiction and other genres, Chiang said, are more than cosmetic. Some stories, such as “Star Wars,” are falsely labeled as science fiction because they have aliens and spaceships, but are really adventure tales: a young man saving a princess, defeating a dark force and returning the world to order. 

This type of story, where the world is in the same state both before the beginning of the tale and again at the end, Chiang said, was common before the industrial revolution and Enlightenment.

“For me, the underlying assumption for real science fiction is the idea that arose during the Enlightenment. It’s the idea that the universe can be understood through reason,” Chiang said. “It’s the idea that the universe is a kind of machine, and if we study it carefully, we can figure out how it works.”

Chiang said that The Dead Past, a novel written by Isaac Asimov and published in the 1950s, exemplifies the nature of science fiction. This novel ends with everyone in the world gaining access to a technology that is able to look milliseconds in the past. Much to the characters’ dismay, this advancement effectively ends personal privacy.

The most important characteristic of this story, Chiang said, is that it ends at a different point than it begins, unlike traditional good-versus-evil stories like “Star Wars.” These more traditional stories usually have a message that the past was good, and that humanity needs to preserve the past.

science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

“Many critics believe that this implies a political message, and it is a conservative one because the efforts of the protagonists are directed at maintaining the status quo,” Chiang said. “The underlying message of these stories is that things were good before, and we should try to keep things that way.”

Real science fiction, on the other hand, follows another pattern, Chaing said, starting with the familiar, new technology disrupting daily life and the world changing.

Another key part of science fiction exemplified in The Dead Past is the democratization of technology, like the machine that can look into the past or, in real life, smartphones. He said that true science fiction often asks two questions: What if this technology exists, and what if everyone had it?

The availability of technology, Chiang said, is a major difference between science fiction and fantasy. He said that some people claim that the only difference between the two genres is cosmetic: they say that if The Lord of The Rings had aliens instead of elves, then it would be called science fiction. 

Chiang disagrees. He then gave two stories: one where gold could be created for cheap by anyone and another where only a few people had the ability.

The difference between the two examples is the importance of the practitioner. The second example — found in the genre of fantasy — depends on the individual, with the universe choosing a particular person for a particular reason. The person may have an innate gift, or a purified soul,  for example. Reasons could also include good intentions, hard work, intense concentration or personal sacrifice. 

The first, which he said is more reminiscent of science fiction, requires none of these.

“None of these things are true of scientific phenomena,” Chiang said. “When you pass a magnet through a coil of wire, electric currents flow, no matter who your parents are, whether your intentions are good or bad. You don’t have to concentrate power or offer a sacrifice in order for a light bulb to turn on. Electricity doesn’t care.”

In fiction, magic typically requires individuals and responds differently to each one. 

“Magic is evidence that the universe knows that you’re a person,” Chiang said. “Magic is an indication that the universe recognizes that people are different from things and that you are an individual who is different from other people.”

Science fiction, in many ways, does the opposite.

science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

“Sometimes people say that the scientist’s way of viewing the world is cold and impersonal,” Chiang said. “I am not sure that I would agree that it’s cold, but definitely agree that it is impersonal.”

Chiang said that people, in fiction and in real life, tend to anthropomorphize the universe, thinking of it as a person, with its own will and thoughts. One such example is the idea that positive thoughts lead to positive outcomes. One author, Chiang said, wrote about a character designed after themselves, and when they wrote about bad things happening to the character, bad things happened to the author. 

“It’s the idea that the universe recognizes the interpersonal, because that’s what people do,” Chiang said. “But mass production cannot be understood this way, because people do not behave this way. No one would grant a favor, once a second, all day, every day, 365 days a year.”

The idea of a lack of connection between humanity and the universe grew in Western cultures during the Enlightenment. Instead of relying on the written works of old philosophers, scientists of this era started to rely on their own experiments and looked for replicable results. 

And capitalism has thrived under this philosophy. 

“Capitalism excels at making people feel unimportant. Working on an assembly line takes a lot of joy out of working,” Chiang said. “This is a direct byproduct of living in a mechanistic universe. In a universe where magic works, that type of alienation cannot happen, because magical nature is inextricably tied to (the) individual.”

Chiang said that the world needs more fantasy and science fiction, as both are essential in understanding the universe and humanity, and help people understand the value of themselves and the world around them. 

Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, asked Chiang, as part of the Q-and-A session, which authors should people read that exemplify science fiction. 

Chiang recommended writers Greg Egan and Kim Stanley Robinson. 

Ewalt also asked Chiang about science fiction’s role in inspiring a sense of awe in the reader. 

The awe readers experience while reading is the same emotion that scientists feel when studying the universe, Chiang said. For many early scientists during the Enlightenment, the surprise and inspiration they felt during experiments were vastly tied to their practice of religion because they were gaining a greater understanding of their god’s creations. 

And it is similar for secular scientists. 

“The awe that you get from understanding the universe,” Chiang said, “is the closest thing a non-religious person can get to religious awe.”

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About the Author

Ted Chiang’s fiction has won four Hugo, four Nebula, and four Locus awards, and has been featured in  The Best American Short Stories . His debut collection,  Stories of Your Life and Others , has been translated into twenty-one languages. He was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and currently lives near Seattle, Washington.

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Award-winning sci-fi writer to speak at Union

Ted Chiang’s science fiction has garnered high praise, including four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His short story, “Story of Your Life,” was the basis of the 2016 film “Arrival.”

Ted Chiang

On Saturday, May 14, Chiang will give a Q&A as part of the Union College Philosophy Department workshop, “Ted Chiang and Philosophy.” To augment the conversation, students, faculty and staff are invited to a free screening of “Arrival” Thursday, May 12, in Karp Hall 105 (5 – 7 p.m.)

“I teach Ted Chiang’s writing in many of my philosophy classes. Colleagues in English, biology, and other disciplines teach his work as well,” said David Friedell, assistant professor of philosophy and organizer of the event. “Ted Chiang’s writing raises valuable questions about a variety of philosophical topics, including the metaphysics of time; aesthetics and the value of beauty; the ethics of technology and AI; the philosophy of math; and the philosophy of religion.”

“I’m thrilled and grateful that students and the entire Union community will be able to engage with such an important and excellent author,” he added.

The Q&A, also open to the public, will be held at 2 p.m. in Olin 115 on May 14.

On May 13 and the morning of May 14, Chiang will also participate in a closed seminar with nine visiting philosophers and two Union students. They will discuss the philosophical significance of Chiang’s work, with the goal of writing a book called Ted Chiang and Philosophy .

The visiting philosophers are Kiki Berk (Southern New Hampshire University), Rebecca Chan (San Jose State University), Noelle Leslie Dela Cruz (De La Salle University), Don Fallis (Northeastern University), Hannah Kim (Macalaster College), Ned Markosian (UMass Amherst), Bradley Rettler (University of Wyoming) and Katherine Ward (Bucknell University).

The event is supported by Union College, the Philosophy Department and the Ichabod Spencer Foundation.

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Ted Chiang’s Soulful Science Fiction

science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

By Joshua Rothman

The sciencefiction writer Ted Chiang.

In the early nineteen-nineties, a few occurrences sparked something in Ted Chiang’s mind. He attended a one-man show in Seattle, where he lives, about a woman’s death from cancer. A little later, a friend had a baby and told Chiang about recognizing her son from his movements in the womb. Chiang thought back to certain physical principles he had learned about in high school, in Port Jefferson, New York, having to do with the nature of time. The idea for a story emerged, about accepting the arrival of the inevitable. A linguist, Chiang thought, might learn such acceptance by deciphering the language of an alien race with a different conception of time. For five years, when he wasn’t working as a technical writer in the software industry, Chiang read books about linguistics. In 1998, he published “Story of Your Life,” in a science-fiction anthology series called  Starlight . It was around sixty pages long and won three major science-fiction prizes: the Nebula, the Theodore Sturgeon, and the Seiun, which is bestowed by the Federation of Science Fiction Fan Groups of Japan. Last year, “ Arrival ” was released, an adaptation of “Story of Your Life,” in which Amy Adams plays a linguist who learns, decades in advance, that her daughter will die, as a young woman, of a terminal illness, but goes ahead with the pregnancy anyway.

Chiang is now forty-nine, with streaks of gray in his ponytail. He started writing science fiction in high school. Since then, he has published fourteen short stories and a novella. By this means, he has become one of the most influential science-fiction writers of his generation. He has won twenty-seven major sci-fi awards; he might have won a twenty-eighth if, a few years ago, he hadn’t declined a nomination because he felt that the nominated story, “Liking What You See: A Documentary,” was unfinished. (It imagines using neuroscience to eliminate “lookism,” or the preference for beautiful faces.) Many of Chiang’s stories take place in the past, not the future. His first published story, “Tower of Babylon,” which appeared in 1990 and won a Nebula Award, follows Hillalum, a Babylonian stonecutter tasked with climbing to the top of the world and carving a doorway into its granite ceiling. It has the structure of a parable and an uncanny and uncompromising material concreteness. At the top of the tower, Hillalum finds that the roof of the world is cold and smooth to the touch. The stonecutters are eager to find out what lies on the other side of the sky, but they are also afraid, and, in a prayer service, Chiang writes, “they gave thanks that they were permitted to see so much, and begged forgiveness for their desire to see more.” Chiang goes to great lengths to show how ancient stonecutting techniques might actually be used to breach the floor of Heaven. He writes the science fiction that would have existed in an earlier era, had science existed then.

Chiang’s stories conjure a celestial feeling of atemporality. “Hell Is the Absence of God” is set in a version of the present in which Old Testament religion is tangible, rather than imaginary: Hell is visible through cracks in the ground, angels appear amid lightning storms, and the souls of the good are plainly visible as they ascend to Heaven. Neil, the protagonist, had a wife who was killed during an angelic visitation—a curtain of flame surrounding the angel Nathanael shattered a café window, showering her with glass. (Other, luckier bystanders were cured of cancer or inspired by God’s love.) Attending a support group for people who have lost loved ones in similar circumstances, he finds that, although they are all angry at God, some still yearn to love him so that they can join their dead spouses and children in Heaven. To write this retelling of  the Book of Job , in which one might predict an angel’s movements using a kind of meteorology, Chiang immersed himself in the literature of angels and the  problem of innocent suffering ; he read C. S. Lewis and the evangelical author Joni Eareckson Tada. Since the story was published, in 2001, readers have argued about the meaning of Chiang’s vision of a world without faith, in which the certain and proven existence of God is troubling, rather than reassuring.

Earlier this winter, I began talking with Chiang about his work, first through Skype, then over the phone and via e-mail. He still works as a technical writer—he creates reference materials for programmers—and lives in Bellevue, near Seattle. “I’m curious about what you might call discredited world views,” he told me, during a phone conversation. “It can be tempting to dismiss people from the past—to say, ‘Weren’t they foolish for thinking things worked that way?’ But they weren’t dummies. They came up with theories as to how the universe worked based on the observations available to them at the time. They thought about the implications of things in the ways that we do now. Sometimes I think, What if further observation had confirmed their initial theories instead of disproving them? What if the universe had really worked that way?”

Chiang has been described as a writer of “humanist” sci-fi; many readers feel that his stories are unusually moving and wonder, given their matter-of-fact tone, where their emotional power comes from. His story “The Great Silence” was included in last year’s edition of “The Best American Short Stories,” and Junot Díaz, who edited that volume, has said that Chiang’s “Stories of Your Life and Others” is “as perfect a collection of stories as I’ve ever read.” Chiang himself seems to find this kind of praise bewildering. When, after about a month of long-distance conversation—he is a slow, careful speaker, and so I had asked to interview him again and again—we met for lunch at a ramen restaurant in Bellevue, I asked Chiang why he thought his stories were beloved. He threw up his hands and laughed with genuine incredulity. He had “no idea” how to account for his own success, he said. He seems almost to regard his stories as research projects pursued for their own sake. When I asked him to speculate—surely all writers have some sense of why they are valued?—he blushed and declined.

Chiang was born on Long Island in 1967. He went to Brown and majored in computer science. In 1989, he attended the Clarion Workshop, a kind of Bread Loaf for sci-fi and fantasy writers. Around that time, he moved to Seattle, where he met Marcia Glover, his long-term partner, during a stint at Microsoft (“I was documenting class libraries or A.P.I.s,” he said); she’s an interface designer turned photographer. He admires the writing of Annie Dillard and enjoyed “The Last Samurai,” by Helen DeWitt.

Beyond this narrow Wikipedian territory, Chiang is reluctant to venture. Although he is amiable and warm, he is also reticent and does not riff. Over several conversations, I learned, in addition, that he owns four cats, goes to the gym three times a week, and regards a small cylindrical seal made of hematite sometime around 1200 B.C. as one of his most treasured possessions—it was a gift from his sister, a reference to “Tower of Babylon.” He told me that, when he was a child, his family celebrated Christmas but wasn’t religious. When I asked Chiang if he had hobbies, he said no, and then, after a long pause, admitted that he plays video games. He refused to say what he eats for breakfast. Eventually, I sent him an e-mail with twenty-four questions that, I hoped, might elicit more personal details:

Do you have a favorite novel? There isn’t one that I would want to single out as a favorite. I’m wary of the idea of a favorite anything. _You've spent many years living near the water. Do you like the sea? _ Not particularly. I don't actually spend much time on the coast; it's just chance that I happened to move here. What was the last work of art that made you cry? Don't know. Do you consider yourself a sensitive person? Yes.

What Chiang really wanted to talk about was science fiction. We spoke about free will (“I believe that the universe is deterministic, but that the most meaningful definition of free will is compatible with determinism”), the literary tradition of naturalism (“a fundamentally science-fictional approach of trying to work out the logical consequences of an idea”), time travel (he thinks of “A Christmas Carol” as the first time-travel story), and the metaphorical and political incoherence of Neill Blomkamp’s aliens-under-apartheid movie “District 9” (he believes that “Alien Nation,” in which the aliens are framed as immigrants, is more rigorously thought through). Chiang reframes questions before answering them, making fine philosophical distinctions. He talks more about concepts than he does about people. “I do want there to be a depth of human feeling in my work, but that’s not my primary goal as a writer,” he said, over lunch. “My primary goal has to do with engaging in philosophical questions and thought experiments, trying to work out the consequences of certain ideas.”

Chiang’s novella, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” grew, he said, out of his intellectual skepticism about how artificial intelligence is imagined in science fiction. Often, such computers are super-competent servants born in a lab and preprogrammed by engineers. “But what makes any human being a good, reliable worker?” he asked me. “A hundred thousand hours of good parenting, of unpaid emotional labor. That’s the kind of investment on which the business world places no value; it’s an investment made by people who do it out of love.” “Lifecycle” tells of Ana and Derek, two friends who, almost by accident, become the loving and protective parents of  artificially intelligent computer programs . Ana and Derek spend decades raising their virtual children, and, by means of a “slow, difficult, and very fraught process”—playing, teaching, chiding, comforting—succeed in creating artificial beings with fully realized selves. Having done so, they are loath to sell their children, or copies of them, to the Silicon Valley startups that are eager to monetize them. They face, instead, the unexpected challenges of virtual parenthood: What do you do when the operating system on which your child runs becomes obsolete? How can you understand the needs and wants of a child so different from yourself?

In an e-mail, I asked Chiang to tell me about his own parents. (He has no children.) Did they inspire the ones in his novella? “I’m not going to try to describe their personalities,” he wrote, “but here are some basic facts”:

Both of my parents were born in mainland China. Their families fled to Taiwan during the Communist Revolution. They went to college in Taiwan and came to the U.S. for their graduate studies; they met here. They’re divorced. My father still works as a professor in the engineering department at SUNY Stony Brook. My mother is retired, but used to be a librarian. I didn’t have them in mind when writing “Lifecycle.”

Perhaps there’s something contrarian in Chiang’s refusal to acknowledge, or even describe, the role that his life plays in the construction of his fiction. Alternatively, he may be being accurate. Contemplating his e-mail, I found myself thinking, in a Chiangian way, about the nature of ethics. According to one theory, a system of ethics flows from the bottom up, emerging from the network of agreements we make in everyday life. According to another, it flows from the top down, and consists of  absolute moral truths  that are discoverable through rigorous analysis. The feelings in Chiang’s stories are discovered from the top down. “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” isn’t a story about Chiang’s parents disguised as a thought experiment. It’s a thought experiment so thorough that it tells us something about the feeling of parenthood. That kind of thoroughness is unusual. It is, in itself, a labor of love.

“I don’t get that many ideas for stories,” Chiang said, around a decade ago, in an  interview  with the sci-fi magazine  Interzone . “If I had more ideas, I would write them, but unfortunately they only come at long intervals. I'm probably best described as an occasional writer.” That is still more or less true. Chiang continues to make ends meet through technical writing; it’s unclear whether the success of “Arrival” could change that, or even whether he would desire such a change. A script based on another of his stories, “Understand,” is also  in development . “I don't want to try to force myself to write novels in order to make a living,” Chiang wrote, in an e-mail. “I'm perfectly happy writing short stories at my own pace.”

In the course of our conversations, he and I discussed various theories about his writing—about what, in general, his project might be. At lunch, he proffered one theory—that his stories were an attempt to resist “the identification of materialism with nihilism.” Over the phone, I suggested another, perhaps related theory—that Chiang’s stories are about the costs and uses of knowledge. I pointed out that some of his stories are about the pain of knowing too much, while others are about the long path to knowing, which permits of no shortcuts. In “Story of Your Life,” Chiang’s linguist, Louise, finds that knowing your life story in advance doesn’t make you want to change it; if anything, it makes you more determined to live it out in full. Knowledge alone is flat and lifeless; it becomes meaningful through the accumulation of experience over time.

Chiang, in his precise and affable way, questioned my idea that his stories were “about” knowledge. “Is that really a useful way to characterize my stories, as opposed to other people’s stories?” he asked. He laughed—and then suggested a different subject that, he’d noticed, was a “recurring concern” in his work. “There’s a book by Umberto Eco called ‘The Search for the Perfect Language,’ ” he said. “It’s a history of the idea that there could be a language which is perfectly unambiguous and can perfectly describe everything. At one point, it was believed that this was the language spoken by angels in Heaven, or the language spoken by Adam in Eden. Later on, there were attempts by philosophers to create a perfect language.” There’s no such thing, Chiang said, but the idea appealed to him in an abstract way. In “ Understand ,” he pointed out, the protagonist learns to reprogram his own mind. He knits together the vocabularies of science and art, memory and prediction, literature and math, physics and emotion. “He’s searching for the perfect language, a cognitive language in which he can think,” Chiang said. “A language that will let him think the kinds of thoughts he wants.”

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New York Times Crossword Answers

Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards NYT Crossword

science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards Crossword Clue Nytimes . The NYTimes Crossword is a classic crossword puzzle. Both the main and the mini crosswords are published daily and published all the solutions of those puzzles for you. Two or more clue answers mean that the clue has appeared multiple times throughout the years.

SCIENCE FICTION WRITER TED WITH FOUR HUGO AWARDS Nytimes Crossword Clue Answer

  • 1d Dramatis personae portrayers
  • 2d Actress and documentarian Remini
  • 3d Arthur of the court
  • 4d Be absorbed as a marinade
  • 5d Pole that extends a sail
  • 7d Prior to in poetry
  • 8d Virtue three time world ice dancing champion
  • 9d Sly sort
  • 10d Grain in some hearty soup
  • 11d Is French
  • 12d What all good children do in a nursery rhyme
  • 13d Penguins great Lemieux
  • 14d Do as hair
  • 19d First MLB team to use artificial turf in its stadium
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  • 35d Apes weapon in Planet of the Apes
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  • 39d Therefore
  • 41d Little brats
  • 42d Thats sufficient I guess
  • 47d Its just an illusion
  • 49d Take a lighter to
  • 50d Have fun
  • 51d Long long times
  • 53d How ballerinas often perform
  • 55d Fortune tell
  • 58d Some pub brews
  • 59d Freezes over
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science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

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  • Entertainment

How a Bellevue writer’s short story became a major new film

Former Microsoft worker Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” is the source for the new film “Arrival.”

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At the heart of local author Ted Chiang’s acclaimed short story “Story of Your Life” is the idea of translation: A linguist learns a new language as she attempts to communicate with an alien race that has suddenly appeared on Earth. And now, “Story of Your Life” itself has been translated: It’s the source for a major new film, “Arrival,” coming to theaters Nov. 11.

Chiang, a native of Port Jefferson, N.Y., has lived in the Seattle area since 1989, when he moved here after college to work as a technical writer at Microsoft. He and I were co-workers there, but our paths hadn’t crossed for a couple of decades when we reconnected this fall, at the Toronto International Film Festival in September (where “Arrival” screened) and later at his Bellevue home for an interview. (I remember young Ted as a great colleague and a smart guy with a ready smile and a thoughtful, measured way of speaking. For the record, he doesn’t appear to have changed much.)

Back in those Microsoft days, Chiang, now 49, was already a published science-fiction writer (he won his first Nebula Award in 1990) and was at work on the research that would lead to “Story of Your Life.” He was looking to use the variational principles of physics, which fascinated him, in a story.

Upcoming movie

Opens Nov. 11 at several theaters. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.

“I saw how I could use them to tell a story about a person who can see the future,” he said, “and knows that there will be both great joy and great pain lying ahead.” That person, he decided, would be a linguist — “if my protagonist learns a language that sort of changes their perception, that would be a way to grant this awareness.” He then spent years reading books about linguistics in his spare time, until, “eventually I felt like I was ready to give the story a try.”

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Initially published in the “Starlight 2” anthology in 1998, the story later became the centerpiece of Chiang’s first published collection, “Stories Of Your Life and Others,” in 2002, and won the Nebula Award for best novella in 1999. Chiang has won four Nebulas, as well as four Hugo Awards and various other honors, and the “Stories of Your Life” collection has been translated into 10 languages — in short, he’s a rock star in the science-fiction world. But he wasn’t quite prepared for an email that arrived in 2011.

“I was contacted by a couple of producers, Dan Levine and Dan Cohen,” remembered Chiang. “They said that a screenwriter had pitched them this idea of adapting the story, and they wanted to get permission for him to actually proceed.” It seemed, initially to Chiang, an unusual choice. The story, he said, is “mostly people sitting in a room talking. I had a hard time picturing it as a movie.”

But the producers took an unusual step: They sent Chiang a DVD of the 2010 French-Canadian film “Incendies ,” directed by Denis Villeneuve. “They said, ‘this is sort of what we have in mind,’ ” Chiang said. He watched the film — which, like “Story of Your Life,” involves non-chronological storytelling — and was intrigued.

“I thought, this is a very interesting choice,” Chiang said. “If they had sent me a DVD of a typical Hollywood science-fiction film, I probably would have said, no, this doesn’t make any sense.” His interest piqued, Chiang agreed to what he described as a “shopping agreement” — giving the producers and screenwriter the right to develop and shop the project, but not (yet) to make a movie from it.

And so began several years of waiting. Though Chiang was encouraged by a phone call with the screenwriter, Eric Heisserer (“he pitched what he envisioned to me, and I thought, yeah, I can see that as a movie”), the process was a long one. Heisserer’s screenplay landed on Hollywood’s Black List of 2012 — a list of the industry’s most highly regarded screenplays that aren’t yet produced — but the studios initially showed little interest. Eventually, director Villeneuve signed on, as did Amy Adams to play the lead role. Finally, a major distribution deal was struck at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and “Story of Your Life” — soon to be renamed “Arrival” — went before the cameras in 2015.

“I think he was sort of pushing a boulder up a hill for six years,” said Chiang, of Heisserer. “He was the one who initially came up with the idea to adapt it, he was the one who pitched it all over town. Over the course of that, a lot of other people eventually wound up helping him push that boulder, but initially it was just him.”

Chiang enjoyed visiting the Montreal set that summer (and experiencing firsthand the glacial pace of movie filming), and attending the movie’s Toronto premiere a year later. He’ll next attend the Los Angeles red-carpet premiere Nov. 6, followed by a fundraising screening in San Diego, to benefit the Clarion Writers Workshop. (That program, which he attended in 1989, “had an enormous impact on me as a writer.”)

And is he happy with the end result of “Arrival”? Yes. “I think it’s a good movie and a good adaptation,” Chiang said. “I know how rare that is.” Hollywood’s track record for adapting written science-fiction works, he said, is “not a pretty picture” (though he points to “Blade Runner,” “A Scanner Darkly” and the recent “Predestination” as examples of good adaptations).

It’s been a long, strange journey from Chiang’s imagination to a multiplex screen — from one language, you might say, to another. Though Chiang’s clearly still processing the experience, he seems content with it. “I realize,” he said, “that I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate that it actually turned out well.”

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Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards

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science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

2023 Hugo Winners

science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

Chengdu, China – Chengdu Worldcon, the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, has announced the winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer. The announcement was made live via the Chengdu Worldcon website on October 21st 2023. The full list of winners and finalists is available on our 2023 page .

1847 valid nominating ballots (1843 electronic and 4 paper) were received and counted from members of the 2022 and 2023 World Science Fiction Conventions for the 2023 Hugo Awards. We do not have details of the voting statistics in the final ballot. We will post them as soon as we receive the information.

The photo of the trophy was provided by Richard Man, winner of this year’s Best Fan Artist Hugo.

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Inside the Censorship Scandal That Rocked Sci-Fi and Fantasy's Biggest Awards

Last week, the Hugo Awards melted down over unexplained disqualifications. Insiders tell Esquire what really happened—and what it could mean for the future of literary awards.

A thousand miles west of Shanghai, on a vast plain between two mountain ranges teeming with giant pandas, it looks like an alien spacecraft has landed in the fourth-largest city in China.

Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects to resemble a star nebula, this is the 59,000-square-foot Chengdu Science Fiction Museum, constructed at lightspeed over the course of a single year to host the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, also known as WorldCon. For writers and readers of science fiction and fantasy, it's like the National Book Awards, the Academy Awards, and San Diego Comic-Con all rolled into one.

On Saturday, October 21st, 2023, thousands of people gathered here for panels, parties, and the annual Hugo Awards ceremony, which celebrates the best works of science fiction and fantasy published or released during the previous calendar year.

In Hollywood, a Hugo Award for best film or TV series may not carry the same cachet as an Oscar or an Emmy, but in bookstores from New York to Moscow, a bright Hugo Award badge on the cover of a novel can help it stand out. “We usually make a display in the store for the nominees and winners,” says Matthew Berger, co-owner of the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego. In their early days, the Hugo Awards recognized writers who have since become genre legends, like Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Frank Herbert; more recently, honorees have included modern masters like George R.R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, and N.K. Jemisin.

main venue for 81st world science fiction convention

That evening in Chengdu, in a massive auditorium shaped like the belly of a whale, Dave McCarty—a middle-aged software engineer for an Illinois trucking company and lifelong sci-fi fan who was chosen by the convention’s leaders to oversee last year’s Hugo Awards—walked onstage to thundering applause. Within the WorldCon community, he’s nicknamed the “Hugo Pope” for serving on so many awards committees over the years.

“With the help of fans from all over the world, including many fans here in China participating for the very first time, we identified a ballot of 114 deserving finalists,” McCarty said behind a podium, wearing a black tux over a white waistcoat and bow tie. “We then asked the community to rank those choices as they saw fit.”

But that’s not what happened. Something had gone horribly wrong.

Among sci-fi and fantasy fans, the uproar was immediate and intense. Had government officials in the host country censored the finalists? Did the awards committee make a colossal mistake when tallying the votes, then try to cover it up? Or did something even stranger occur?

To get to the bottom of the mystery, I spoke with more than a dozen past Hugo winners, finalists, and committee members, some of whom requested anonymity. But to understand what these insiders believe really happened —and what it means for the future of the Hugos and other literary awards—we have to utilize a science fiction trope and go back in time.

The Hugo Awards have courted controversy before. In 2015, a right-wing voting bloc led by Brad R. Torgersen dominated the ballot after he complained that the Hugos had become “an affirmative action award” for “underrepresented minority or victim group” authors and characters. In 2021, the voting process to select the host city for the 2023 convention became a lightning rod for conspiracy theories. Each year, anyone who purchases a membership in the World Science Fiction Society can vote on where WorldCon will be held two years later. In 2021, voters could choose between Chengdu and Winnipeg, Canada for the 2023 convention. “There were concerns that a couple thousand people from China purchased memberships [in the World Science Fiction Society] that year to vote for Chengdu,” says Jason Sanford, a three-time Hugo finalist. “It was unusual, but it was done under the rules.”

While Sanford welcomed the participation of new Chinese fans, other people were alarmed that many of the Chinese votes for Chengdu were written in the same handwriting and posted from the same mailing address. The chair of the convention that year, Mary Robinette Kowal, says some members of the awards committee wanted to mark those votes as invalid. “But if you’re filling out a ballot in English and you don’t speak English, you hand it to a friend who does,” she says. “And the translation we’d put in could be read as ‘where are you from,’ not ‘what is your address.’”

Eventually, a few votes were invalidated by the committee, but most were allowed to stand. “China has the largest science fiction reading audience on the planet by several magnitudes, and they are extremely passionate,” Kowal says.

Later, when Chengdu was announced as the winning site for the 2023 convention, more than 100 authors—including N. K. Jemisin, G. Willow Wilson, S. A. Chakraborty, and Tochi Onyebuchi—signed an open letter “in protest of serious and ongoing human rights violations taking place in the Uyghur region of China.” Other authors were concerned about the Chinese Communist Party’s history of censoring LGBTQ content, as well as material that criticizes the party’s government.

These concerns planted the seeds for this year’s crisis, which reached a boiling point on January 20, 2024.

the 81st world science fiction convention opens in chengdu

Compared with other literary awards, the Hugos are usually remarkably transparent and democratic. While the National Book Awards and the Booker Prizes are selected behind closed doors by a panel of judges, anyone can vote for the Hugos by purchasing a supporting membership in the World Science Fiction Society for each year’s convention.

Most years, the Hugo committee shares the nominating statistics later the same evening after the winners are announced, or a few days later, at most. This year, Dave McCarty didn’t share the statistics until January 20—91 days after the awards ceremony, with no explanation for the delay. “The World Science Fiction Society’s constitution says the statistics have to be released within three months, but it’s never taken that long before now,” says Sanford.

When McCarty finally shared last year’s nominating statistics on his Facebook page, authors, fans, and finalists were shocked. In the history of the awards, no works had ever been deemed ineligible like this. Many people who had expected Kuang to win for Babel were now stunned to see she very well could have, and McCarty’s refusal to explain what happened made everything worse. (McCarty did not respond to interview requests for this story.)

“Fandom doesn't like people fucking with their awards, no matter who does it or why,” says John Scalzi, a three-time Hugo Award winner who was a finalist last year in the Best Novel category: the very same category in which R.F. Kuang should have been nominated for Babel, according to the nomination count on page 20 of McCarty’s document. “The reason people are outraged right now is because they care about the award, in one fashion or another, and this lack of transparency feels like a slap,” Scalzi says.

Brandon Sanderson , another past Hugo winner, says this incident damages the reputation of the award: “To find out that the committee behind the scenes [overrode] the voter base without saying anything AND with possible political motivations is extremely unsettling.”

Neil Gaiman didn’t respond to my interview request, but he did comment directly on McCarty’s Facebook post : “Is there anyone who could actually explain WHY Sandman episode 6 was ineligible?”

McCarty responded: “The only statement from the administration team that I can share is the one that I already have, after we reviewed the constitution and the rules we must follow, we determined the work was not eligible.”

Since then, hundreds of people have asked McCarty to explain what exactly in the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) constitution or rules made these works ineligible, but his responses quickly deteriorated into insults, such as “Are you slow?” and, “Clearly you can't understand plain English in our constitution.” However, there isn’t a single rule in the WSFS constitution that could possibly explain why any of these writers were deemed ineligible.

“When I started seeing Dave McCarty’s responses, I was utterly unsurprised,” a former WorldCon committee member who asked to remain anonymous tells me. “That is very consistent with who he is, and how he’s treated other people. It’s incredibly disrespectful on every level.”

china sichuan chengdu worldcon cn

A few days later, McCarty apologized for his “inappropriate, unprofessional, condescending” responses, but still refused to explain the ineligibles. Without answers from McCarty, many Hugo enthusiasts have coalesced around two theories: either the awards committee miscounted early-round votes and realized their mistake too late, or the ineligible writers were censored under pressure from the Chinese Communist Party.

“If they had issued a statement saying there was a miscount and we’re deeply sorry about it, people would have been mad, but it would have been understandable,” Kowal says. Some fans have pointed to mathematical irregularities in the voting statistics compared to past years, and an additional former WorldCon committee member tells me, “I’m guessing someone made a mistake—probably more than one.”

Meanwhile, allegations of censorship have spread like Star Trek tribbles, especially because the protagonist of R. F. Kuang’s Babel is queer, Zhao is non-binary, and all four “ineligible” writers have criticized the Chinese Communist Party or its policies at some point in the past.

Gaiman, Kuang, and Zhao declined to comment on this story, but confirmed on social media that they were just as shocked as everyone else. Weimer says one of his Patreon posts from 2021, where he expressed concerns about holding the Hugos in China, may have marked him for censorship. “It's possible that the [Chinese Communist Party] took umbrage at my piece, or the [convention] felt that they might, and so I was rendered ineligible,” he says.

However, multiple former WorldCon committee members who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity do not believe the Chinese government—nor the Chinese members of last year’s Hugo Awards administration—directly or indirectly censored the awards. Rather, they believe that one or more members of the executive committee mismanaged this year’s awards—and failed to explain why four popular works were deemed ineligible.

On January 31, less than two weeks after McCarty revealed the voting statistics that kicked off the controversy, the California nonprofit that owns the Hugo Awards trademarks released a bombshell statement : McCarty resigned from the organization, alongside the chair of its board of directors, Kevin Standlee. Additionally, the nonprofit censured McCarty “for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.” Two other members of the Chengdu awards committee, Ben Yalow and Shi Chen, were censured as well, “for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that [they] presided over.”

Yalow and the rest of the 2023 awards committee did not respond to my interview requests for this story. None of my sources know why Yalow or Chen were censured, though as co-division heads of the convention, they would have been McCarty’s superiors.

Meanwhile, organizers of the upcoming 2024 Hugo Awards in Glasgow, Scotland, released a statement of their own to calm the waters: “We will also publish the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists, and any withdrawals of potential finalists from the ballot.”

china sichuan chengdu worldcon cn

While this may be the last we hear about the Chengdu crisis, each year’s WorldCon and Hugo Awards are run by a different crop of volunteers, leaving many authors, fans, and finalists hopeful about the future, albeit insistent that permanent changes need to be made to the WSFS constitution that can’t be ignored by individual committees.

“At the very least, I think those [writers] who were removed should have their eligibility extended by a year, and perhaps it's time for a long hard look at the Hugo committee and overhaul how the award is managed,” Sanderson says.

Scalzi agrees. “The thing I would like to stress here is that the Hugos have been to this point pretty resilient: there have been major crises involving them before… and the [community] moved to address them,” he says. “So while this is a problem and needs to be addressed, quickly and comprehensively, I feel pretty confident the community will address it and the Hugos will come out the other side a better award.”

One thing everyone seems to agree on is that the transparent voting process makes the Hugo Awards special. “I love the Hugo for its unique method of walking the line between being a juried award and an open-voting, ‘who has the most fans’ award,” Sanderson says. “It's like an Academy Award, except if any person dedicated enough to the genre were able to join the Academy and participate.”

Perhaps in the future, other literary awards will be inspired by the transparency of the Hugos, if not the controversies that have occasionally accompanied them. Imagine the thrill and tragedy of finding out a book was one vote away from winning or becoming a finalist for the National Book Awards or the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Imagine the drama!

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But when I reached out to those award organizations, they didn’t sound too wild about the idea. “The National Book Awards judges make their decisions independently of the National Book Foundation staff and Board of Directors, and deliberations are strictly confidential,” says Ale Romero, communications and marketing manager at the National Book Foundation, which presents the National Book Awards.

A rep for the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) says that privacy is part of what gives the award its personality. “Much like the Quakers, nearly every decision made at the NBCC is one undertaken by the entire group, [and] I believe it would be very difficult to persuade a majority of our board to vote for such a change,” says Keetje Kuipers, vice president of awards and diversity, equity, and inclusion for the NBCC. “Releasing a voting statistics tally would not be in keeping with the tenor of our traditional deliberation style, which favors passionate critical argument over all else.”

At the end of my Zoom call with Sanford, I see some emotion in his face around the eyes. “When I was young, science fiction and fantasy books literally saved my life,” he says. “I looked for books that were Hugo finalists or winners, and they showed me a way forward. They showed me there are other people out there who think like me.”

Whatever happens to the Hugos moving forward, one thing is clear: No one should have the power to erase books from the reading lists of future Jason Sanfords.

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Science fiction authors were excluded from awards for fear of offending China

Neil Gaiman Portrait Session

HONG KONG — 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.

“As we are happening in China and the ‘laws’ we operate under are different… we need to highlight anything of sensitive political nature in the work,” Dave McCarty, the head of the 2023 awards jury, wrote in an email dated June 5.

Any work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet or other sensitive issues, he added, “needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot.”

McCarty, who resigned from his role in the awards last month, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement on Thursday, the organizers of the 2024 Hugo Awards, which are being held in Glasgow, said they were taking steps “to ensure transparency and to attempt to redress the grievous loss of trust in the administration of the Awards.”

Last year’s Hugo Awards, which unlike most literary prizes are run by fans, were held in October during the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, known as Worldcon, in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu. Scores of science fiction and fantasy writers had signed an open letter protesting the location, which was chosen by voting members of the convention, citing in an open letter allegations of abuses against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minority groups in China that Beijing denies.

The emails , which were first reported by science fiction writers and journalists Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford on science fiction news site File 770 and Sanford’s Patreon account , show awards organizers detailing potential “negatives of China” in authors’ published works, book reviews and social media histories.

Some books, like Kuang’s “Babel” — which won the 2023 British Book Award for Fiction — appear to have been excluded simply for taking place in China. Zhao’s novel “Iron Widow” was flagged as being a “reimagining of the rise of the Chinese Empress Wu Zetian.”

Organizers also flagged comments that authors, including Barkley and Sanford, had made about the merits of holding the awards in Chengdu and whether they signed or shared the open letter.

“They went through all my blog posts and all my reviews like a fine-tooth comb,” Paul Weimer, an American author and three-time Hugo nominee who was disqualified, told NBC News in a phone interview on Friday.

Among the reasons cited for excluding Weimer was his supposed previous travel to Tibet, a Chinese region where Beijing is also accused of abuses.

“The funny thing is that I didn’t even go to Tibet. I was in Nepal. They didn’t get basic facts right about me,” he said.

Weimer, whose display name on X had as of Friday been changed to “Paul ‘Nepal is not Tibet’ Weimer,” said the vetting went against the spirit not only of the Hugo Awards but of science fiction itself.

“Censoring people based on what you think that a government might not like is completely against what the whole science fiction project is,” he said.

The emails were released by awards organizer Diane Lacey, who wrote some of the emails and said in an accompanying apology letter that in hindsight she probably should have resigned.

“We were told to vet nominees for work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet, or other topics that may be an issue in China and, to my shame, I did so,” said Lacey, who did not respond to a request for comment.

“I am not that naïve regarding the Chinese political system, but I wanted the Hugos to happen, and not have them completely crash and burn.”

Mithil Aggarwal is a Hong Kong-based reporter/producer for NBC News.

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Some Authors Were Left Out of Awards Held in China. Leaked Emails Show Why.

When some books, including best sellers, were conspicuously absent from the science fiction Hugo Awards last year, writers and fans became suspicious.

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The author R.F. Kuang is shown in a dark coat, looking up and away from the camera, against a blurry backdrop.

By Alexandra Alter

The Hugo Awards, a major literary prize for science fiction, have been engulfed in controversy over revelations that some writers may have been excluded based on their perceived criticism of China or the Chinese government.

Suspicions in the science fiction community have been building for weeks that something was amiss with last year’s awards, which rotate to a different city each year, and in 2023 were hosted in Chengdu, China. Now, newly released emails show that the awards were likely manipulated because of political concerns.

Here’s what we know.

What are the Hugo Awards?

The awards , first established in 1953, are given annually at a gathering hosted by the World Science Fiction Convention. Writers are nominated and awarded prizes by members of the World Science Fiction Society, which includes science fiction fans. Each person can nominate five works for each category. Those entries are then tallied so that the six works with the most votes become finalists. Previous winners have included luminaries like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson and Philip K. Dick.

Why were writers, and fans, upset?

In January, the Hugo Awards revealed which writers had been nominated for last year’s awards, and by how many people. The information made clear that multiple authors who had enough nominations to be finalists were shut out of the process; award administrators had marked them as not eligible , without specifying a reason. Among the excluded authors were two Western writers of Chinese descent: R.F. Kuang, who is Chinese American and who was widely expected to be recognized for her novel “Babel,” a historical fantasy set in mid-1800s Oxford, and Xiran Jay Zhao, a Chinese Canadian author whose novel “Iron Widow” is a sci-fi reimagining of China’s female emperor.

“I assume this was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility,” Kuang posted on Instagram in January. “Excluding ‘undesirable’ work is not only embarrassing for all involved parties, but renders the entire process and organization illegitimate.”

What did the leaked emails reveal?

The exclusion of popular authors of Chinese descent led to speculation that the awards’ administrators had weeded out those whose political views might prove controversial in China. Those suspicions were confirmed recently, when emails leaked by Diane Lacey, a member of last year’s Hugo administration team, were published in a report by Chris M. Barkley, a science fiction fan and journalist, and Jason Sanford, a journalist and science fiction writer.

The email correspondence published in the report showed that Dave McCarty, one of the Hugo administrators, had advised other members to vet the finalists and “highlight anything of a sensitive political nature” in China, including works that focused “on China, Taiwan, Tibet or other topics that may be an issue in China.” Such works, he added, might not be safe to put on the ballot.

“This really just cut to the core of the awards,” Sanford said. “For a genre that believes so deeply in free speech to willingly take part in doing research on political issues of awards finalists, knowing that it’s going to be used to eliminate some of those finalists, it’s outrageous.”

In an interview with The Times, Lacey confirmed that she had provided the emails, and said that she shared them publicly because she regretted her actions, and wanted to ensure that the Hugos would not be tainted again in the future. “I felt very guilty about what I did and wanted to be able to look myself in the mirror again,” she said.

What’s still murky?

It’s unclear if the awards’ administrators were acting under pressure or were pre-emptively seeking to avoid controversy. Lacey said that she was not aware of overt directives from Chinese officials, but added that McCarty had mentioned getting guidance from Chinese counterparts. In one of the released emails, McCarty told a colleague to be on the lookout for “mentions of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, negatives of China” from writers or in their works, and added that “I will try to get better guidance when I have a chance to dig into this deeper with the Chinese folks on the committee.” McCarty did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

Questions also remain about whether Chinese writers were excluded as finalists for political reasons.

What has the fallout been — for Worldcon, and in the sci-fi literary world?

Last month, Worldcon announced that McCarty had resigned from his post and that he and two others had been censured “for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon.”

Esther MacCallum-Stewart, the chair of this year’s Worldcon, which will take place in Glasgow, issued an apology for last year’s debacle and said that steps would be taken “to ensure transparency and to attempt to redress the grievous loss of trust in the administration of the Awards.”

Writers who were excluded from last year’s award have expressed outrage.

“The Hugo Awards tried so hard to appease the Chinese government they circled back to being racist by preemptively disqualifying Chinese diaspora,” Xiran Jay Zhao wrote on X.

In an email, Kuang called the revelations “disappointing.”

John Scalzi, who was a finalist last year, said that the 2023 awards were “fraudulent,” and that he felt betrayed by the administrators.

“The Hugos, because they are a fan-given award, are the ones that are closest to the hearts of dyed-in-the-wool science fiction fans,” he said. “To have them compromised like this is a punch in the gut to a whole lot of people.”

Alexandra Alter writes about books, publishing and the literary world for The Times. More about Alexandra Alter

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science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

Leaked Emails Reveal Hugo Awards Ineligibility Details

Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford have released The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion , an extensive look at the irregularities in the recent Hugo Awards presented in Chengdu China.

Leaked emails from Diane Lacey, a member of the Hugo Award administration team, reveal that several works and authors that should have made the ballot were ruled ineligible for political reasons. Those works include Babel by R.F. Kuang, Paul Weimer for Fan Writer, and Xiran Jay Zhao for the Astounding Award.

From the report:

Emails and files released by one of the administrators of the 2023 Hugo Awards indicate that authors and works deemed “not eligible” for the awards were removed due to political considerations. In particular, administrators of the awards from the United States and Canada researched political concerns related to Hugo-eligible authors and works and discussed removing certain ones from the ballot for those reasons, revealing they were active participants in the censorship that took place.

Awards administrator Dave McCarty reportedly wrote in an email to the admin team,

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. It’s not necessary to read everything, but if the work focuses on China, taiwan, tibet, or other topics that may be an issue *in* China… that needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot (or) if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it…. At the moment, the best guidance I have is ‘mentions of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, negatives of China’. I will try to get better guidance when I have a chance to dig into this deeper with the Chinese folks on the committee.

Dossiers were apparently compiled on nominees by members of the admin team and researcher Kat Jones, pointing out potential issues with many works that were subsequently deemed ineligible (though the leaked documents did not indicate any reason for the exclusion of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman TV series).

Lacey wrote an apology for her part in the situation:

Let me start by saying that I am NOT making excuses, there are no adequate excuses. I am thoroughly ashamed of my part in this debacle, and I will likely never forgive myself. But the fans that have supported the Hugos, the nominees, and those that were unfairly and erroneously deemed ineligible in particular, deserve an explanation. Perhaps the only way I can even begin to ease my conscience is to provide one…. We were told to vet nominees for work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet, or other topics that may be an issue in China and, to my shame, I did so. Understand that I signed up fully aware that there were going to be issues. I am not that naïve regarding the Chinese political system, but I wanted the Hugos to happen, and not have them completely crash and burn. I just didn’t imagine that there would be so many issues, and that they’d be ultimately handled so poorly by [Hugo Award administrator] Dave [McCarty[ (Okay, so maybe I do have a certain level of naivete.)

Lacey also explains why the nominating data, usually released the night of the awards, was held back for the full 90 days allowed:

Dave insisted that there needed to be more time elapsed before the Chinese nationals would be safe from the ensuing uproar, and he made it clear from the time the finalist names were released that he intended to wait the entire 90 days. Are they safe now? I hope so, I truly do, but I can’t imagine that ensuing uproar and the international media attention that came along with it has done them any favors. As far as Dave’s apparent actions in cooking the results, I have to say I didn’t really expect that either. And if I had I, like many others have said, would have imagined he’d do a better job.

After the release of Barkley & Sanford’s report, Kat Jones published a letter expressing concern “that the confidential Hugo Award eligibility research work product that was ‘leaked’ to you may be incomplete or modified. And I am really shocked that this extremely extremely confidential material was shared in the first place.” Jones did research as instructed by the Adminstrator, but became concerned about the process and “did no further work for the Chengdu Worldcon after the first pass of eligibility research.”

Update: Many people in the field expressed surprise at the relative dearth of work by Chinese authors on the nomination list, and that has been explained, too. Lacey said ‘‘We were told there was collusion in a Chinese publication that had published a nominations list, a slate as it were, and so those ballots were identified and eliminated’’ That ‘‘slate’’ was reportedly an extensive list of recommendations published in Science Fiction World magazine, the leading SF magazine in China.

The complete report can be read at Sanford’s Patreon here or at File770.com .

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4 thoughts on “ leaked emails reveal hugo awards ineligibility details ”.

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A part of me is surprised that anyone would think it happened for any reason other than political censorship. Science fiction has a long history of political commentary and criticism of status quo; both are dangerous if not downright illegal in China. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It was an impossible situation once China won the voting for the 2023 WorldCon.

https://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/china0806/3.htm

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“And I am really shocked that this extremely extremely confidential material was shared in the first place.”

It is always a red flag when some one is more upset about the fact that damning information was found, than the exposed actions themselves. It usually means they cannot justify the actions, so they try to shift attention to the circumstances that brought it to light. Like a child that is more angry that someone “snitched” than they are concerned about the behavior that was exposed.

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Do the Hugo Awards have a rule that “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”?

' src=

This is a pretty damning condemnation of the Hugo awards, the Worldcon organizations, and those who run it. And it wasn’t all that long ago that there was a big fight over politics and voting procedures, too.

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science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards

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Hugo Awards scandal: Why the prestigious sci-fi literary awards is under fire for censorship

Neil gaiman, r.f. kuang and xiran jay zhao were deemed ineligible for works that are "sensitive" to china, by nardos haile.

The Hugo Awards, the most prestigious science fiction and fantasy literary awards in the book community, has recently been blanketed in scandal.

It all began when esteemed sci-fi authors like Neil Gaiman , R.F. Kuang , Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer were no longer eligible as finalists for the awards even though they had earned enough votes to be considered finalists. This week, leaked emails from the event committee suggested that several of the authors were excluded from the shortlists last year for flagged comments or works that could potentially have been seen as sensitive and offensive to China, where the awards were held for the first time last year. 

The contradictory data that showed that the authors were eligible for the awards but left off the ballots without explanation has sparked concerns that the awards have been tainted by censorship. The scandal has resulted in a member of the 2024 Worldcon committee resigning and has put the prestigious book awards reputation at stake.

Here's a breakdown of the Hugo Awards controversy and the fallout that followed:

Chengdu, China chosen for awards location

The annual awards, run by members of the World Science Fiction Society who vote for their favorite works authors across a handful of categories, were held in Chengdu in October at the global sci-fi convention Worldcon, which is held in a different city every year.

However, the 2023 location for Worldcon and the Hugos was not met with open arms from some sci-fi and fantasy writers who had signed an open letter protesting the choice, which was voted on by members of the convention. In the open letter , the collective of authors asked the committee to  " revoke the 2023 Worldcon bid to Chengdu, China," protesting  against the alleged abuses of Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in China that the country has long denied.

"As science fiction and fantasy authors , we imagine brave new worlds in our fiction. We challenge power, authority and the status quo, where grave injustices may be perpetrated without accountability or reparation. We write underdogs and outsiders who disrupt power structures and overthrow cruel overlords," the letter read.

"So often, our characters make unthinkable sacrifices, and undertake impossible quests to bring down tyrants and oppressive regimes," the letter continued. "They do so for a chance at a just and more inclusive future, where their people no longer suffer violence and discrimination."

The outcry from the authors was not enough for the event location to be moved.

The nomination stats released to backlash

Months after the awards, the voting body released the nomination statistics that show which authors made finalist rounds. According to Esquire , the voting body usually releases the numbers the same night as the ceremony or within days of the event. In a break with tradition, this year the stats weren't made public . . . until three months after the awards.

On Jan. 20, the statistics reported that "Babel" by   Kuang (one of Salon's favorite books of 2022) , an episode of "The Sandman" by Gaiman, "Iron Widow" by Zhao, and Weimer had all received more than enough votes to be finalists for the awards. But after a first round of voting, the writers were disqualified with an asterisk noting that each of their works was "ineligible" for awards consideration.

When Dave McCarty, division head of the Hugo Awards, posted the report to his Facebook, he was met with a barrage of criticism from authors, fans and finalists. In the comments of the post, he said to a person asking why certain works were deemed ineligible to the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) constitution, “Are you slow?” He wrote to another person, “Clearly you can’t understand plain English in our constitution.” 

Even Gaiman questioned the nomination process, commenting on the post , “Is there anyone who could actually explain WHY 'Sandman '  episode 6 was ineligible?”

McCarty later apologized for “inappropriate, unprofessional, condescending” comments but did not address the censorship theories bubbling up online. People speculated that the exclusion happened because both Kuang and Zhao were born in China and now live in the West, Kuang’s main character is queer, Zhao is non-binary and all the authors have criticized the Chinese Communist Party and/or its policies at some point in the past.

On Instagram, author Kuang shared a statement calling the situation “embarrassing.” She continued to say that she “did not decline a nomination, as no nomination was offered."

She wrote that until a reason is given that "explains why the book was eligible for the Nebula and Locus awards, which it won, and not the Hugos, I assume this was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility. Excluding ‘undesirable’ work is not only embarrassing for all involved parties, but renders the entire process and organization illegitimate. Pity.”

In a video posted on Zhao's page, they told their followers to “make a fuss about this to get us some answers” after they got “disqualified for political reasons probably."

McCarty and a director resign from the Hugo Awards

Following, the blowback from the ineligible authors, the nonprofit that owns the Hugo Awards released a statement saying that McCarty and Kevin Standlee, the chair of its board of directors, both resigned from the organization. The statement also said that the organization has censured McCarthy “for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.”

Also, two other members of the awards committee, Ben Yalow and Shi Chen, were censured, “for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that [they] presided over.”

Leaked emails show censorship

This week saw the release of leaked emails from committee member Diane Lacey, which were gathered by Hugo-nominated sci-fi author Jason Sanford and Hugo-winning fan writer Chris M. Barkley. Their  special report  showed that members of the Hugo administration kept certain books off-ballot because they wanted to follow Chinese censorship laws.

“It’s not necessary to read everything, but if the work focuses on China, Taiwan, Tibet, or other topics that may be an issue *in* China . . . that needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot (or) if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it,” wrote McCarty, the report showed.

“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,” McCarty wrote in an email dated June 5, 2023. 

Another email showed the group talking about Kuang's novel "Babel" and "The Daughter of Doctor Moreau" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The committee noted that while both works discuss China, Kuang's book “has a lot about China. I haven’t read it, and am not up on Chinese politics, so cannot say whether it would be viewed as ‘negatives of China,’” Hugo Awards administrator Kat Jones said. Jones has resigned as an overall administrator from this year's awards and Worldcon.

While Moreno-Garcia's book mentions "importing hacienda workers from China. I have not read the book, and do not know whether this would be considered 'negative.'" "The Daughter of Doctor Moreau" made it to the final ballot, which ultimately disqualified Kuang for taking place in China.

Weimer, another author who was deemed ineligible, was questioned for what the committee thought was a trip to Tibet. “Brief Twitter mention of Hong Kong and reference to Tiananmen [ sic ] Square." Weimer said in the report that he had never been to Tibet.

“I was afraid that in the end this was going to come down to soft or hard or some kind of censorship once things started leaking out,” Weimer said.

Ultimately for author Zhao, they were disqualified because their novel "Iron Widow" was apparently flagged for being a “reimagining of the rise of the Chinese Empress Wu Zetian.”

The fallout of the scandal 

Following the leaked emails, the members running this year's Hugo Awards in Glasgow  released an apology and new rules for the upcoming awards.

The chair of the 2024 awards Esther MacCallum-Stewart said, "I unreservedly apologize for the damage caused to nominees, finalists, the community, and the Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards. I acknowledge the deep grief and anger of the community and I share this distress."

She continued that "Glasgow 2024 do not know how any of the eligibility decisions for the Hugo, Lodestar and Astounding Awards held at the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention were reached. We know no more than is already in the public domain."

However, the awards will abide by new rules for the 2024 nominations and are taking "steps to ensure transparency and to attempt to redress the grievous loss of trust in the administration of the Awards."

Firstly, "when our final ballot is published by Glasgow 2024, in late March or early April 2024, we will also publish the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists, and any withdrawals of potential finalists from the ballot.

"Full voting results, nominating statistics and voting statistics will be published immediately after the Awards ceremony on 11th August 2024," the statement said.

Ultimately, "the Hugo administration subcommittee will also publish a log explaining the decisions that they have made in interpreting the WSFS Constitution immediately after the Awards ceremony on 11th August 2024."

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Nardos Haile is a staff writer at Salon covering culture. She’s previously covered all things entertainment, music, fashion and celebrity culture at The Associated Press. She resides in Brooklyn, NY.

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RF Kuang sits on a park bench in Boston, Massachusetts

Science fiction awards held in China under fire for excluding authors

Concerns raised about interference or censorship after documents showed writers were barred despite receiving enough nominations

A prestigious literary award for science fiction, which was hosted in China for the first time, has come under fire for excluding several authors from the 2023 awards, raising concerns about interference or censorship in the awards process.

The New York Times bestseller Babel by RF Kuang , an episode of the Netflix drama The Sandman and the author Xiran Jay Zhao were among the works and authors excluded from the 2023 Hugo awards, which were administered by the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in Chengdu in October.

Babel, which won fiction book of the year at the British book awards in 2023, is a speculative fiction novel by Kuang, a Chinese-American author also known for her novel Yellowface.

No reason was given for the exclusions, which were revealed only on 20 January when the Hugo awards published the full nomination statistics for last year’s prize. Certain titles were listed as having been given votes, but were marked with an asterisk and the words “not eligible”, with no further details given.

The Hugo awards are the premier accolade for sci-fi and fantasy fiction. They are administered by the World Science Fiction Society, a loose collective of sci-fi fans who vote for their favourite works or authors across more than a dozen categories before the annual conference, Worldcon, which is held in a different city each year. Last year’s event was the first time it had been held in China.

Recently released documents showed that several works or authors – some with links to China – had been excluded from the ballot despite receiving enough nominations to be included on their respective shortlists. The excluded nominees include Kuang and Zhao, authors who were born in China but are now based in the west.

Concerns have been raised that the authors were targeted for political reasons, connected to the fact that the ruling Chinese Communist party exerts a tight control on all cultural events that take place inside its borders.

Dave McCarty, the head of the 2023 Hugo awards jury, wrote on Facebook: “Nobody has ordered me to do anything … There was no communication between the Hugo administration team and the Chinese government in any official manner.”

McCarty did not respond to a request from the Guardian for comment, but shared what he said was the official response from the awards administration team on Facebook: “After reviewing the constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.” He declined to elaborate on what the rules were.

“I can only guess to why I was excluded, but it probably has something to do with my critical comments about the Chinese government in the past,” said Zhao. “You would think that as a big, powerful country, China would be graceful about criticisms, but they in fact take it very personally, and doubly so when it’s from Chinese diaspora.”

Kuang debuted as an author with the Poppy War trilogy, an award-winning fantasy series inspired by modern Chinese history that imagines Mao Zedong as a teenage girl.

Episode six of The Sandman, which is based on a comic book written by Neil Gaiman, was excluded from the best dramatic presentation category, despite receiving enough nominations to be on the final ballot. Gaiman has publicly criticised the Chinese authorities for imprisoning writers.

In an Instagram post published on 22 January, Kuang wrote: “I wish to clarify that no reason for Babel’s ineligibility was given to me or my team. I did not decline a nomination, as no nomination was offered … I assume this was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility.”

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Paul Weimer, a hobbyist sci-fi writer, discovered last week that he was excluded from the best fan writer category, despite receiving enough nominations to be shortlisted. “I had the highest of hopes for Chengdu,” said Weimer, who has been nominated for Hugos in previous years. “I thought it was amazing that a number of Chinese fans had got together to get this bid together.”

The organising committee of Chengdu Worldcon did not respond to requests for comment. Some people in the sci-fi community had raised concerns about the event being hosted in China when Chengdu won the bid to host the event in 2021.

“My Hugo acceptance speeches would have gotten me arrested in China. I have said things on record that are just illegal,” said the writer Jeannette Ng in 2021.

The Worldcon organisers “should have taken our concerns about the awards being held in China seriously from the beginning. We knew something like this was going to happen,” said Zhao.

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.”

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Authors ‘excluded from Hugo awards over China concerns’

Leaked emails reveal organisers of leading science fiction and fantasy awards flagged works of a ‘sensitive political nature’

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Leaked emails from the organisers of the prestigious Hugo awards for science fiction and fantasy suggest several authors were excluded from shortlists last year after they were flagged for comments or works that could be viewed as sensitive in China.

In January the Hugo awards published the statistics behind the 2023 awards , which were held as part of the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in the Chinese city of Chengdu in October. The data showed that the New York Times bestseller RF Kuang and the young adult author Xiran Jay Zhao were among authors who had received enough nominations to be on the ballot in their respective categories but were deemed “not eligible” by the award’s administrators, without further explanation.

The news sparked consternation in the science fiction community, with many fans and authors expressing concern that the awards had been tainted by censorship. Now emails leaked from the 2023 awards committee appear to have confirmed those fears, with a member of the 2024 Worldcon committee resigning as a result.

In an email on 5 June 2023, Dave McCarty, the head of the 2023 Hugo awards jury, wrote: “We need to highlight anything of a sensitive political nature in the work. It’s not necessary to read everything, but if the work focuses on China , Taiwan, Tibet, or other topics that may be an issue *in* China … that needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot or if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it.”

McCarty did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

The emails were leaked by another member of the 2023 Hugo administration team, Diane Lacey, to Chris M Barkley and Jason Sanford, science fiction writers who are also journalists. Barkley and Sanford published a report about the controversy on Wednesday.

In a statement to Barkley and Sanford, Lacey said: “We were told to vet nominees for work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet, or other topics that may be an issue in China and, to my shame, I did so.”

In the emails, Lacey had flagged one of Zhao’s books as being “a reimagining of the rise of the Chinese empress Wu Zetian”, adding: “I don’t know if that would be a negative in China.”

Zhao said: “I cannot believe the western members of the admin team chose to willingly participate in this instead of upholding the integrity of the awards.”

Another of the writers affected was Paul Weimer, who was excluded from the fan writer category. One of the several points raised about him in the emails is that he had previously travelled to Tibet. But Weimer said he had only been to Nepal, not Tibet. “It’s not even competent political censorship – it’s haphazard bullshit,” he said.

The chair of the organising committee of the 2024 Worldcon, which will be held in Glasgow in August, said in a statement that Kat Jones, who had researched Weimer, had resigned from the committee.

“I acknowledge the deep grief and anger of the community and I share this distress,” Esther MacCallum-Stewart said. She said the committee would be taking steps “to ensure transparency and to attempt to redress the grievous loss of trust in the administration of the awards”.

The incident prompted discussion among the science fiction community in China. One commenter on Weibo wrote: “Diane Lacey’s courage to disclose the truth makes people feel that there is still hope in the world, and not everyone is so shameless … I can understand the concerns of the Hugo award staff, but ‘I honestly think that the Hugo committee are cowards.’”

The Hugo awards are the premier accolade for science fiction and fantasy. They are administered by the World Science Fiction Society, a loose collective of fans who vote for their favourite works or authors across more than a dozen categories before the annual conference, Worldcon, which is held in a different city each year. Last year’s event was the first time it had been held in China.

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The Hill

Neil Gaiman, Paul Weimer among writers excluded from Hugo Awards over fear of offending China: Report

T he Hugo Awards, some of the most prestigious literary awards in science fiction, excluded several authors last year over concerns that their work could be offensive to China, leaked emails show.

Authors Neil Gaiman, Paul Weimer, R.F. Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao were deemed ineligible as finalists in last year’s awards despite earning enough votes. Released emails show that award organizers were concerned with how the authors would be perceived in China , File 770, a science fiction outlet, reported.

The Hugo Awards were hosted in China last year. According to the reports, Dave McCarty, who headed the 2023 award selection, wrote in an email last June that since the event was “happening in China” and the laws they must operate under “are different,” that the organizers should “highlight anything of sensitive political nature.”

Work that focused on China, Taiwan, Tibet or other topics deemed sensitive needed to be “highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot,” McCarty wrote. He resigned from his position last month, NBC News reported .

The email was first reported by File 770. The reporters found Weimer had discovered he was deemed “not eligible” for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer when the voting statistics were released.

The report’s authors also found that administrators for the awards who were from the United States and Canada only appear to have read works that were from the Western world and published in English. They found that Western award administrators did not raise concerns about Chinese authors’ books because they may not have read them.

“Because of this, it is possible some of these Chinese works were removed for reasons other than slating,” the authors write.

The emails were released by organizer Diane Lacey, who told File 770 that the committee was required to “vet nominees for works” that may be sensitive to China.

“To my shame, I did so,” she wrote in an apology letter. “Understand that I signed up fully aware that there were going to be issues. I am not that naïve regarding the Chinese political system, but I wanted the Hugos to happen, and not have them completely crash and burn.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

Neil Gaiman, Paul Weimer among writers excluded from Hugo Awards over fear of offending China: Report

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    Within the world of science fiction, Ted Chiang is legendary. He's won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, and a staggering number of other honors, all for a body of work numbering about fifteen stories. This is especially remarkable for a genre forged in the pulps, where top writers still regularly publish a raft of […]

  7. Celebrated author Ted Chiang shares how 'literature of change' shapes

    True science fiction, Chiang said, is the literature of change. The winner of four Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, four Locus Awards and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Chiang opened Week Two of the Chautauqua Lecture Series, themed "New Frontiers: Exploring Today's Unknowns," at 10:30 a.m. Monday, July 5 in the Amphitheater.

  8. Ted Chiang

    Ted Chiang's fiction has won four Hugo, four Nebula, and four Locus awards, and has been featured in The Best American Short StoriesStories of Your Life and Others , has been translated into twenty-one languages. He was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and currently lives near Seattle, Washington. Stories of Your Life and Others.

  9. Award-winning sci-fi writer to speak at Union

    May 6, 2022 Ted Chiang's science fiction has garnered high praise, including four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His short story, "Story of Your Life," was the basis of the 2016 film "Arrival."

  10. Ted Chiang's Soulful Science Fiction

    By Joshua Rothman. January 5, 2017. The science-fiction writer Ted Chiang. Illustration by Ben Kirchner. In the early nineteen-nineties, a few occurrences sparked something in Ted Chiang's mind ...

  11. Hugo Award for Best Novel

    Lois McMaster Bujold has received four Hugos on ten nominations. Five authors have won three times: Isaac Asimov and Fritz Leiber (with two Hugos and one Retro-Hugo each), N. K. Jemisin, Connie Willis, and Vernor Vinge. Nine other authors have won the award twice.

  12. Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards NYT Crossword

    June 30, 2021 by David Heart Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards Crossword Clue Nytimes . The NYTimes Crossword is a classic crossword puzzle. Both the main and the mini crosswords are published daily and published all the solutions of those puzzles for you.

  13. Science Fiction Writer Ted With Four Hugo Awards Crossword Clue

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  14. The Hugo Awards

    Chengdu, China - Chengdu Worldcon, the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, has announced the winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer. The announcement was made live via the Chengdu Worldcon website on October 21st 2023.

  15. Hugo Award

    The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier award in science fiction. The award is administered by the World Science Fiction Society.It is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the ...

  16. science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards/710875 Crossword Clue

    The Crossword Solver found 30 answers to "science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards/710875", 6 letters crossword clue. The Crossword Solver finds answers to classic crosswords and cryptic crossword puzzles. Enter the length or pattern for better results. Click the answer to find similar crossword clues . Enter a Crossword Clue Sort by Length

  17. How a Bellevue writer's short story became a major new film

    Back in those Microsoft days, Chiang, now 49, was already a published science-fiction writer (he won his first Nebula Award in 1990) and was at work on the research that would lead to "Story of ...

  18. Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards

    Possible answer: C H I A N G Did you find this helpful? Share Tweet Look for more clues & answers Sponsored Links Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards - crossword puzzle clues and possible answers. Dan Word - let me solve it for you!

  19. 2023 Hugo Winners

    2023 Hugo Winners. October 21, 2023 ~ Cheryl. Chengdu, China - Chengdu Worldcon, the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, has announced the winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer. The announcement was made live via the Chengdu Worldcon website on October 21st 2023.

  20. Hugo Awards 2024: What Really Happened at the Sci-Fi Awards ...

    By Adam Morgan Published: Feb 2, 2024. A thousand miles west of Shanghai, on a vast plain between two mountain ranges teeming with giant pandas, it looks like an alien spacecraft has landed in the ...

  21. Science fiction authors were excluded from awards for fear of offending

    HONG KONG — 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 ...

  22. Some Authors Were Left Out of Awards Held in China. Leaked Emails Show

    R.F. Kuang, author of "Babel," a best-selling novel of speculative fiction, was widely expected to be recognized by the Hugo Awards. Instead, she was excluded.

  23. Leaked Emails Reveal Hugo Awards Ineligibility Details

    Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford have released The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion, an extensive look at the irregularities in the recent Hugo Awards presented in Chengdu China.. Leaked emails from Diane Lacey, a member of the Hugo Award administration team, reveal that several works and authors that should have made the ballot were ruled ineligible for political reasons.

  24. Hugo Awards scandal: Why the prestigious sci-fi literary awards is

    Here's a breakdown of the Hugo Awards controversy and the fallout that followed: Chengdu, China chosen for awards location. The annual awards, run by members of the World Science Fiction Society ...

  25. Science fiction awards held in China under fire for excluding authors

    Last modified on Thu 25 Jan 2024 09.54 EST. A prestigious literary award for science fiction, which was hosted in China for the first time, has come under fire for excluding several authors from ...

  26. science fiction writer ted with four hugo awards Crossword Clue

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  27. Authors 'excluded from Hugo awards over China concerns'

    Leaked emails from the organisers of the prestigious Hugo awards for science fiction and fantasy suggest several authors were excluded from shortlists last year after they were flagged for comments or works that could be viewed as sensitive in China.. In January the Hugo awards published the statistics behind the 2023 awards, which were held as part of the World Science Fiction Convention ...

  28. Neil Gaiman, Paul Weimer among writers excluded from Hugo Awards ...

    The Hugo Awards, some of the most prestigious literary awards in science fiction, excluded several authors last year over concerns that their work could be offensive to China, leaked emails show ...