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The chair of Glasgow Worldcon 2024, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, has issued an apology on behalf of Worldcon “for the damage caused to nominees, finalists, the community, and the Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards” at last year’s convention in Chengdu, China, and vowed that this year’s awards in Glasgow will "ensure transparency".
In January authors R F Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Neil Gaiman raised questions after it was revealed that they were ruled ineligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards despite receiving enough nominations. Weeks later, Worldcon Intellectual Property (WIP), the non-profit corporation which holds the service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, including the Hugo Award, announced that its director Dave McCarty and chair of the WIP board of directors Kevin Standlee, would be resigning on 30th January. WIP said McCarty was "censured 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". Standlee was also "reprimanded for public comments that mistakenly led people to believe that we are not servicing our marks". It was still unclear why certain authors were deemed ineligible.
Last week Chris M Barkley and Jason Sanford reported in the science fiction fanzine File770 that leaked emails revealed how Hugo organisers were concerned about how some authors might be perceived in China.
MacCallum-Stewart’s apology, released on 15th February, revealed Kat Jones, a Hugo Award administrator, who allegedly raised concerns about Kuang’s Babel being potentially politically inflammatory in China, had resigned “with immediate effect as Hugo Administrator from Glasgow 2024 and has been removed from the Glasgow 2024 team across all mediums”.
MacCallum-Stewart said in a statement: "I acknowledge the deep grief and anger of the community and I share this distress.
“I, and 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,” she explained.
She went on to detail three steps the Glasgow Worldcon team would be taking "to ensure transparency and to attempt to redress the grievous loss of trust in the administration of the awards".
She committed to publishing the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists when the final ballot is published by the convention in spring 2024, and said full voting results, nominating statistics and voting statistics will be published immediately after the awards ceremony on 11th August 2024.
Finally 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”, she said. "Glasgow 2024 will continue to address this matter as we go forward as a Worldcon."
The convention is slated to take place from 8th to 12th August.