Genre Grapevine for February 2024
Naturally my Genre Grapevine column for February is being released in March. Apologies for the delay. As can be imagined, the last month has been extremely hectic. Also, this column is available free to the public. If you like my writings on genre issues, consider backing my Patreon.
Additional Insight into Hugo Awards Censorship and Exclusion
In early February, Chris Barkley contacted me and said he'd received emails and documents related to the 2023 Hugo Awards from Diane Lacey, one of the award administrators. I'd seen Chris only two weeks earlier at the ConFusion convention in Detroit, where we sat at the bar discussing that weekend's release of the Hugo nomination and voting stats. We were both shocked by the works and authors deemed "not eligible" and kept off the final ballot for no stated reason. We also were surprised so few Chinese authors and works made the Hugo longlist.
While talking in Detroit, Chris and I felt shenanigans had likely happened during last year's Hugos. However, we also feared the truth of what happened might never come out.
Two weeks later, Chris shared the leaked emails and documents and I realized we'd been wrong. The truth would indeed come out.
Since our joint report on the Hugos was released on File770 and my Genre Grapevine, the censorship and exclusion in last year's awards has taken the SF/F genre and the larger world by storm. Our report has been covered in The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, NBC News, Publishers Weekly, and numerous other outlets.
More importantly, others in the genre have picked up on our report and dug deeper into the critical issues with last year's Hugos. Camestros Felapton and Heather Rose Jones released the masterful "Charting the Cliff: An Investigation Into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics," with their analysis showing that last year's Hugo nomination statistics as released "cannot be treated as a reliable presentation of the actual nomination votes by members." Their report also detailed "known errors in the listed names of nominees, inconsistencies in the vote totals, inaccuracies in the manner points were calculated in elimination rounds and highly atypical patterns of voting."
One thing Felapton and Jones showed with their analysis is that unless the original votes are actually found and released, there is no way to rerun last year's Hugos based on the nomination and voting statistics.
Other reporting examined why large numbers of Worldcon members from China had their Hugo votes discarded and why so many Chinese authors and works were removed from both the final ballot and the longlist.
As Chris and I covered in our original report, the Hugo administrators said these Chinese authors and works were removed because of allegations of slate voting. However, slate voting isn't listed as a reason for removal in the Hugo rules and has not previously been used as a reason to remove works from the Hugo final ballot and longlist. The most notable cases of slate voting in Hugo Awards history were with the various Sad Puppies campaigns a decade ago. In those cases, Hugo administrators didn't remove the Sad Puppies works from award consideration despite the obvious and very public slating.
Zionius wrote an excellent analysis of the Chinese authors and works removed from the Hugos. First off, Zionius pointed out that the so-called slate was actually a recommendation list of works for consideration published by Science Fiction World, the largest SF/F magazine in both China and the world. According to Zionius, the recommendation list was published in the magazine on April 5 and at the same time "many domestic science fiction publishers released similar lists to promote their own nominated works and characters."
What Science Fiction World and other publishers in China did is the same thing many publishers, authors, and fans in the United States and other Western countries do, which is promote and bring attention to works eligible for the Hugo Awards. So it appears there was no actual slating, despite what the Hugo admins said.
Zionius's report is in Chinese but can be easily translated online. I highly recommend people read it. Vajra Chandrasekera also shared an excellent thread that summarized Zionius's analysis and findings.
As Chandrasekera said, "Obviously, given the tremendous size of the Science Fiction World subscriber base (bigger than that of every western magazine put together) many people would have made perfectly legitimate use of these recommendations, same as any high-profile Hugo recommendations list except with more readers. So essentially the white censorship committee penalized Chinese fans for existing and discarded all of these votes as illegitimate, which instantly removed all the most popular Chinese writers from contention and allowed for a US-dominated year in standard fashion. They did TWO levels of censorship."
For a deeper dive into the Chinese works removed by the Hugo admins, I also recommend this excellent analysis by Prograft that examines the various Chinese works removed from the different Hugo categories.
What all this reporting shows is that the censoring of the Hugo Awards happened alongside the exclusion of nearly a thousand votes by Chinese SF/F fans, resulting in the removal of large numbers of Chinese authors and works from the final ballot.
It's almost as if some of the Hugo administrators were afraid the World Science Fiction Society's premier award might actually represent a large portion of the world.
Other Hugo Awards News
After the release of the report, Kat Jones resigned as the overall 2024 Hugo Awards administrator. Ten days later the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon announced Nicholas Whyte would run this year's Hugos. In a statement, Whyte shared his experience with the Hugos and added "The Glasgow 2024 team and I have committed to publishing, along with the final Hugo ballot, the potential nominees who were ineligible or who declined nomination, and the grounds for any ineligibility decision; and along with the final results of voting, the full statistics as mandated by the constitution and in addition a detailed log of our decisions interpreting the rules."
In a post titled "Rabbit Test unwins the Hugo," Samantha Mills stated that "The way that things currently stand, I don't think I can fully consider myself a Hugo winner."
Adrian Tchaikovsky said in a statement on his website that he was "overjoyed" when Children of Time won the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Series. However, after recent revelations about censorship in the awards and the "mass disenfranchisement of Chinese voters," "I cannot consider myself a Hugo winner and will not be citing the 2023 award result in my biographical details, or on this site."
Simina Mistreanu wrote a very good deep-dive article for the Associated Press on the Chinese science fiction community and its growth in recent decades. As a side-note, the article said the leaked emails Chris and I wrote about couldn't be independently verified. No one from the AP contacted either Chris or myself to verify these emails, a process we'd have been happy to assist them with.
An essay Ada Palmer wrote about censorship in January was heavily shared in the genre community in recent weeks, with Palmer raising a very important point: "The majority of censorship is self-censorship, but the majority of self-censorship is intentionally cultivated by an outside power."
Meg Frank wrote on Bluesky that "Dave McCarty is emotionally abusive, generally manipulative, and has sexually harassed myself and numerous others. I've spoken openly about this and made CoC complaints when possible. He is not a missing stair, he is a creepy handyman who has been using his previous community service as a shield." Jesi Lipp responded to Frank's post by saying "I've never made it a secret that he groped me at a Smofcon in 2011 and it has always been largely treated as a non-issue."
As Abigail Nussbaum wrote, "Appalling as it is, the choice to screen English-language nominees for ideological compatibility may, in fact, be a sideshow to the real scandal, which is that hundreds of Chinese voters have been disenfranchised. And—barring even more revelations—this disenfranchisement cannot be blamed on PRC sensibilities and censorship. I truly doubt that it was in the interest of China, or the Chinese business interests who took over Worldcon, to remove Chinese-language nominees from last year's Hugo ballot. This decision came from the American and Canadian staffers who made up the English-language Hugo team, many of them Worldcon volunteers of long standing. In this context, it is infuriating to recall just how quickly the response to our original sense of what this scandal was turned to anti-democratic measures and calls to limit the power of rank-and-file Worldcon members. 'Elections have consequences!' crowed the people who are still pissed they weren't allowed to steal the site selection vote in 2021, while others called to limit site selection to those with 'skin in the game'—read, those with the wherewithal to travel to US-based conventions. But as it turns out, the call was coming from inside the house. This was never a China problem. It's an us problem."
A bid to bring Worldcon to Montréal, Canada, in 2027 has been announced. File770 has more details on the bid. The other bid for that year's Worldcon is in Tel Aviv, Israel.
According to File770, Ben Yalow is no longer a member of the bid committee trying to bring Worldcon to Los Angeles in 2026. The LA bid is the only 2026 Worldcon bid and will be voted on at this year's Worldcon in Glasgow.
Cheryl Morgan resigned from WSFS' Hugo Awards Marketing Committee. "I resigned … primarily because I no longer wish to be held responsible for (including being subject to legal and reputational risk for) the actions of organisations of which I am not a member and over which I have no influence."
As an FYI, on Friday March 8 at 8 pm ET I will be taking part in an online discussion with the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society about the Hugo Awards controversy. Email info@psfs.org for a Zoom link.
And in a final note, Chris and I have been Midnight Societied for our Hugo report.
NaNoWriMo Instituting Changes After Igniting a "Revolution" Against Itself
Last year I reported that National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) shut down their forums in the middle of November after one of their moderators evidently took part in inappropriate behavior on the site with children (for this earlier report, see the first item under "Other News and Info").
Since then, more disturbing information on NaNoWriMo has emerged. A month ago a Reddit user named The Nanowrimo Chronicles shared a two-part post titled "Discords, forums and a decade's worth of allegations: how Nanowrimo ignited a revolution against it." (Part 1 of the post is here, Part Two here.) In the post the Reddit user details allegations of scam sponsorships of NaNoWriMo by vanity publishers, "inaction against predators," other issues with abuse, questions about what NaNoWriMo did with donations, and much more. Definitely read the Reddit posts if you want all the alleged details about what has been going on.
Now it appears NaNoWriMo is making changes to address these concerns. On March 1, a writer named Sushi who is also an admin for Wikiwrimo shared an email reportedly from Kilby Blades, NaNoWriMo's Interim Executive Director. The email stated:
"We listened to a lot of feedback in November—some of it was hard to hear, but taking action to improve the organization was necessary. Since then, we've paused some of our standard operations in order to think through how to move forward, holding our mission in mind and community safety as priority number one."
The email detailed that NaNoWriMo will no longer host "open, all-ages social spaces." In addition, the NaNoWriMo forums, which are currently closed, will reopen with a small group focus and the organization's volunteer program will be completely changed.
NaNoWriMo also released a public FAQ detailing these changes and others.
VanderMeers Dealing with Vandalism
The mailbox of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer was deliberately vandalized on February 16, possibly because of their work on environmental issues in their community. As Ann VanderMeer said, "Someone deliberately backed into our mailbox until they knocked it over. A childish & cowardly act perpetuated by so-called adults. We will not be intimidated or bullied."
As Jeff VanderMeer told me, "The seeming presence of circling cars as 'backup' and the calculated nature of the act to not hurt their vehicle while unearthing a mailbox structure embedded with a heavy cement base was extremely suspicious. Other acts the past couple of years have been suspicious if impossible to nail down as deliberate or coincidence."
The VanderMeers have been extremely outspoken about environmental destruction in Tallahassee and across Florida, angering local developers and political power brokers. They have also worked hard to rewild their backyard, with that work receiving national coverage in places such as Audobon.
Fun Takes on Prologue Discourse
There's a rhythm to life: The seasons change and return, the Earth revolves around the sun, and every few years the writing community engages in "Prologue Discourse." This discourse generally varies between "Prologues are the original fiction-writing sin and readers hate them" and "I'll give up my prologues when you pry them from my cold, dead hands."
In late February, prologue discourse returned from hibernation on X-Twitter. Perhaps Nick Mamatas summed up this new discourse best by saying, "Did anyone on this website over the past few days announce that they do not read novel prologues, and did anyone declare that as writers this upset them, or was the entire discourse generated by people complaining about authors complaining about readers not reading prologues?"
Instead of sharing the repeat of previous prologue discourse, here are a few funny takes on the discourse:
Stephan Michael Loy shared a great image of a book where the title of Chapter 1 is "Prologue."
Jen Williams told the truth about how much fun it is writing certain prologues. "I tell you what, I don't think there's much more fun an activity in my job than writing the prologue to a fantasy book
Prologue: some fucking mad shit happens
Chapter One: ~TWO THOUSAND YEARS LATER~..."And as Jeff VanderMeer said, "Importance of my prologue = w/o it epilogue is just all alone. So then I have to cut the epilogue and add two prologues, just so nobody is lonely. Reader be damned. You're getting two prologues, an epitaph, a monograph, a song lyric, a joshing retort, & a deep sigh before Ch. 1."
Awards
Nominations for the Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards close on March 9 at 16:00 GMT.
SFWA named Susan Cooper as the 40th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master.
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association named F.J. Bergmann as their 2024 Grand Master.
Jim Hosek received the 2024 Service to SFWA Award.
Finalists for the 2023 Bram Stoker Awards.
Longlist for the 2024 Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire.
The shortlist for the 2023 British Science Fiction Association Awards.
Finalists for the 2023 Ursa Major Awards. Voting is open through March 24.
Protocol of Humanity by Satoshi Hase won the 44th Japan SF Grand Prize.
Finalists for Asimov's 38th Annual Readers' Award.
Finalists for Analog's 2023 Analytical Laboratory.
Winners of the 2023 Clarkesworld Readers Poll.
Finalist for the 2024 Splatterpunk Awards.
Finalists for the 2024 Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards.
Emma Kerkman won the 2024 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing.
Other News and Info
A must-read column by Victoria Strauss about how to deal with literary scams by changing your mindset. "Yes, there are a lot of bad actors in and around publishing…not just scammers and predators, but people and companies who are well-intentioned but don't have the skills to do the job (schmagents, unqualified freelance editors, amateur publishers). But that doesn't mean there aren't also plenty of reputable, competent people. They definitely exist. The constantly expanding universe of scams and pitfalls hasn't changed that. … My standard advice for how to cope with the prevalence of scams is to educate yourself: learn as much as possible about publishing and self-publishing – and do it before you start trying to snag an agent, or querying publishers, or assessing self-publishing platforms and service providers. The more you know about how things should work, the easier it is to recognize bad practice when you encounter it."
Son M. shared on X-Twitter that "The illegal binding of fanfiction to be sold on storefronts without even the fanfic writer's permission is causing such a deep loss of free content created by communities. Writers are actively deleting works that have lasted 15+ years as staples in communities. It's so sad." In that thread Son M. shared tweets from other people highlighting examples of fan fiction being packaged into print books by people other than the original authors and sold online. On File770, Anne Marble also explored what is happening, pointing out that "The important thing to note is that the fanfic writers are not behind this. They are not giving their permission — and they not getting compensated. Creators of fanart are also seeing their work sold on Etsy and other sites."
In response to an article in The Guardian about "the rise and rise of 'romantasy' novels," Christina Orlando critiqued some of the promotions around romantasy for ignoring all the women who have been reading and writing fantasy for many decades. And a thread by Seanan McGuire pointed out "Oh, look. It's a new manifestation of 'girls were mean to me in high school, and thus nerdy girls can't possibly have existed, because if they did, they would have been the prize at the bottom of my cereal box.'" McGuire then added, "'Women have discovered fantasy.' Nope. Diana Wynne Jones and Diane Duane and Robin McKinley and Mercedes Lackey and Jane Lindskold were THERE, you just...didn't choose to see them."
As reported by Publishers Weekly, "A number of readers are calling out Tor Books over the cover art of Gothikana by RuNyx, published by Tor's romance imprint Bramble on January 23, which incorporates AI-generated assets in its design. On February 9, BookTok influencer @emmaskies identified two Adobe Stock images that had been used for the book's cover, both of which include the phrase 'Generative AI' in their titles and are flagged on the Adobe Stock website as 'generated with AI.'"
Neon Hemlock's 2024 novella series Kickstarter is underway. Neon Hemlock publishes amazing novellas and I plan to back them.
Handheld Press, an independent publisher in the U.K. that released works by overlooked women authors, will publish their last books in July 2024.
Spotify and Findaway Voices recently changed their terms for audiobook publishers and rightsholders, allowing them to "reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, [and] create derivative works from" audiobooks. After protests from authors and organizations such as the Authors Guild, Spotify and Findaway Voices agreed the terms were overly broad and changed them. Writer Beware has a detailed dive into all of this.
According to Julia Ganis, the Romance Writers of America's Facebook page on February 20 was "promoting a workshop on using AI to write a romance novel. I'm astounded at this nonsense. There is never a low that RWA won't sink to." Ganis noted RWA removed the post a few hours later but "LOL we noticed it."
If you think stories – even bad stories – can't change people, check out this tweet by epidemiologist Gabrielle A. Perry: "People make fun of Lifetime but that network changed public health discourse forever. For a DECADE, their movies on domestic and sexual violence educated the country about the signs. Their movies on Teen Pregnancy aided in lowering the national teen birth rate. Education is key."
It now appears Warner Bros. Discovery will be deleting the Coyote vs Acme film despite massive public outcry and backlash. Since the film was shown in a theater once last year, Hugo Book Club tweeted that "it's eligible for the Hugo Award in 2025. And my friends and comrades, together we could do something hilarious as a pointed criticism of David Zaslav."
Fascinating thread by Pulp Librarian: "Many readers have asked me 'Why do so many pulp covers feature women in ripped red blouses standing in swamps while a man who looks a bit like David Bowie fights off an unusual animal attack?' The answer is: pulp artist Wil Hulsey…"
On February 1, Analisa Packham tweeted "For a small fee, I will attend your enemy's job talk and ask 'how is this economics?'" While the tweet was only shared a few hundred times, it spawned a million variations. Frances Klein appears to have been the first person to aim the fun at writing workshops, saying in a viral tweet "For a small fee, I will go to your enemy's writing workshop and say, 'this feels like it wants to be two poems.'" From there, other great variations emerged, such as Amber Sparks saying "For a small fee, I will go to your enemy's writing workshop and say 'I just can't relate to this character'"; Brandon Ketchum added "For a small fee, I will go to your enemy's writing workshop and say: 'You're never allowed to use adverbs in your writing'"; and Justin C. Key scored the amazing "For a small fee, I will go to your enemy's writing workshop and say 'it feels like the story REALLY starts on page 50.'"
New research reveals what dinosaurs really looked like.
Tom Gauld shares ways to defend your local library from governmental cuts. I'd personally choose the "black magic" option.
Opportunities
The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction: Volume Three edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Chinaza Eziaghighala is open for submissions of works originally published in 2023. Deadline March 31. Details>>
Worlds of Possibility seeks fiction and poetry. Deadline March 23. Details>>
LittlePuss Press seeks original manuscripts of fiction and non-fiction, including works-in-progress, along with reprint proposals of literary/historical works of significance by transgender authors. Details>>
Baffling Magazine will open to submissions of flash fiction from June 1 to 15 on the theme of "monstrous" as well as unthemed submissions. Details>>
The Ignyte Awards has two openings for administrative support. Applications must be received by March 8, with each position offering a $400 honorarium. Details>>