More on the Hugo Awards mess

Significant new information finally has emerged in the Hugo Awards mess I blogged about on Jan. 23.  As I explained in that earlier post, several nominations were deemed "ineligible" for the award, including Babel by R.F. Kuang, which had been the frontrunner for the best novel Hugo. 

Much of the blame for what happened has been put on the Hugo Award administrator for last year's Chinese Worldcon, Dave McCarty, who has refused to discuss what happened, but there were other Western fans on the Hugo committee. On one of my social media sites, Bluesky, I wrote (on Jan. 28), "I don't know Dave McCarty, but I'm puzzled why the other North Americans on the Hugo committee -- Ben Yalow, Ann Marie Rudolph, Diane Lacey -- have not received any pressure to explain what happened."

Well, one of that trio who had been cooperating in the coverup, Diane Lacey, apparently finally had enough and broke the code of silence, releasing emails that show, as everyone suspected, that the Hugo Awards committee engaged in political censorship. Here is the resulting investigative story by Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford, posted on File 770 and elsewhere. Here is Diane Lacey's apology letter.  There's other stuff at File 770, including one of the fans now implicated in the scandal, Kat Jones, whining about being outed and demanding special treatment.  Jones was actually the Hugo Awards administrator for this year's Worldcon in Scotland; the embarrassed committee has now announced that she has resigned. .

There's been a lot of comment, including this followup blog post by SF author John Scalzi.  (I have a posting in the comments).