Controversy over 'inexplicable' exclusion of R F Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao from Hugo Awards 2023 : sciencefiction

[–] b3an@lemmy.world 47 points 9 months ago

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.”

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's like the Hugo's are trying their hardest to become irrelevant

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 15 points 9 months ago

What in the world is going on in this thread

[–] RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I'd say it's actually pretty explicable

[–] FMT99@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Feel free to enlighten those of us who are out of the loop.

[–] stellargmite@lemmy.world 30 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee -2 points 9 months ago

What would you explicate it with, though? an explication of sorts? something else?

[+] feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world -23 points 9 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

R F Kuang is American and Xiran Jay Zhao is Canadian. They write in English.

[–] SmolSweetBean@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] Mandarbmax@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago

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.

[+] Deceptichum@kbin.social -23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Gee I wonder what the reasoning for leaving Gaiman out of the title was…

[–] HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'd be very interested in hearing a hypothesis from you that explains all of the data rather than less than half of it.

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