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.

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.

  • Richard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    Can someone tell me whether Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem series is stained by Chinese communist propaganda? Because I find the story very appealing, but am wary of the many awards that the series won in Communist Pseudo-China. Are there any undertones I missed?

    • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
      9·
      9 months ago

      I don’t recall any overt tones. I think it is so highly awarded because it isn’t anti-CCP, though I don’t remember ever feeling like it took any time away saying it was good, either.

    • ridago@programming.dev
      5·
      9 months ago

      You can tell the book is written from within China. It has some different perspectives to what you’d normally find in a “western” book, but not in a propaganda way. Worth the read

    • Axiochus@lemmy.world
      5·
      9 months ago

      I’d say that it’s substantially about the cultural revolution and imo gives it an overall negative treatment that happens to align with the present transition away from hardcore Maoism in China. Cultures are not so monolithic as to be functions of their local propaganda. Much like, say, the US is producing a lot of good science fiction despite having an unhealthy love of capitalism.