Leaked emails show organizers of the prestigious Hugo Awards vetted writers’ work and comments with regard to China, where last year’s awards were held.
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.
Firstly, I’m not really sure where you are getting your figures. There were 200,000 paid members under the previous leader and it went up to 600,000 just before he was elected.
Secondly, it seems like you’re attributing this sharp increase to a third party nefarious action. I would assume that it were simply a larger portion of those 10m voters deciding to register membership in order to vote in a leader more in tune with their party values.
I take the point that a small group only needing paid membership to vote is open to manipulation. However, I don’t really see a comparison between these two events.
I misremembered the number of members - looks like it went up much more drastically than I recalled. And I never said that either were “nefarious actions”, just that a huge influx of new voters with different opinions can alter outcomes.
Fair enough.