Controversy over 'inexplicable' exclusion of R F Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao from Hugo Awards 2023
Controversy over 'inexplicable' exclusion of R F Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao from Hugo Awards 2023
R F Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Neil Gaiman were ruled ineligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards in 2023 despite receiving enough nominations.
R F Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Neil Gaiman were ruled ineligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards in 2023 despite receiving enough nominations.
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.”
It's like the Hugo's are trying their hardest to become irrelevant
Yeah, because we westerners are more important than the billion Chinese when you want to make money.
What in the world is going on in this thread
I'd say it's actually pretty explicable
Feel free to enlighten those of us who are out of the loop.
All three authors have criticised the CCP in the past. The awards were held in Chengdu, land ot pandas , spicy food , and snowflake leadership. Two of the authors are from international Chinese diaspora . The snowflakes running the country are incredibly sensitive to what ethnic han Chinese outside China - especially in public spheres - say about them. They threw Gaiman in for good measure ( atleast theyre consistent which is kind of surprising). This is just another small measure of softpower being exerted. Any author with reliance on that market is either self censoring or prepared to not have access to it. So clearly its what Hugo did in order to leave in one piece. Mustve been some interesting conversations go on.
What would you explicate it with, though? an explication of sorts? something else?
100% plicable.
I don't like Neil Gaiman, I find his writing a bit repetitive and his personality is a little grating. But are these other two authors any good? I'm always looking for new science fiction authors to get into, and quite liked Cixin Liu if these have been translated from Mandarin.
I really like Xiran. Kinda smacks you over the head with the message of the book but really fun to read with a great setting and twists.
I've read all of R.F. Kuang's books and they are all in my top 10 favorite books ever. Check out The Poppy War series.
I’ve tried a couple of things from R F Kuang. If you like super generic fantasy tropes with an East Asian feel, you’ll probably enjoy their stuff. I haven’t finished any full series because there just wasn’t anything to hook me. I think major authors like Raymond Feist and Terry Brookes also suffer from the generic argument albeit with a European setting so YMMV.