Everything about the Hugo Awards 2023 was unusual, starting from the very late announcement of the finalists. I’m not even going to go into the change of dates and veue o the convention itself. That is a whole different beast. I will stay focused on the Hugo Awards which were given out in late October 2023. Normally, the voting and nominating statistics are released right after the awards ceremony because the data is there anyway – otherwise there coulnd’t be any winners, now could there? This year, we had to wait quite a while for the first part of the stats to be released, which showed us the voting details. Those were interesting insofar as a lot of works won in the very first round. Most of the time, it takes a few rounds in the instant run-off voting to determine the winner, but okay. Sometimes a work is just so beloved that it wins right off the bat. Let’s say that the Hugo voters were more unanimous in 2023 than we tend to be.
The waiting time for the nominating details was much longer. In fact, it took Chengdu Worldcon the entire 90 day period allowed by the WSFS Constitutaion to finally release the data. Many of us were curious where certain works had ended up, especially ones like R. F. Kuang’s Babel which a lot of us expected to see on the shortlist. Babel’ s absence is only the tip of the iceberg, however. It was deemed “ineligible” without further explanation as to what supposedly renders it ineligible. It was published in the correct year, it’s SFF, and a ton of people (myself included) had nominated it for a Hugo Award.
Several other works and people were also excluded as ineligebly, when it is difficult to understand what the reasons for that decision might be. Paul Weimer , to give the most glaring example, is not only a fan writer (and has been for many years) who has been nominated for Hugos before, he has also written during 2022, and been nominated by a considerable number of people. Nobody knows quite why he should not be eligible for this particular Hugo Award, himself included ! What’s more, he has not been contacted to clarify any eligibility issues, and was just now made aware that he would have made the shortlist.
For the Astounding Award, Xiran Jay Zhao was deemed ineligible even though they are eligible. They were a finalist last year, which makes the 2023 Hugos the second year of their Astounding eligibility. It even says so explicitly on the Astounding Awards website. I have been told that they featured a Uyghur Muslim character in one of their books (which I haven’t read, so I can’t speak to how prominently that character features). I’ll let us all come up with our own conclusions as to why Zhao may have been “ineligible” for this award.
A Sandman episode was eliminated as ineligible, for no discernible reason. Due to a rule that states if both an episode of a TV show and the entire season are nominated in their respective categories (Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form and Long Form), then only the work with more nominations may remain. Sandman Season 1 as a whole was excluded due to this rule because the individual episode had garnered more nominations. That is perfeclty fine, but by the same rule, the nominated episode “The Sound of Her Wings” should have remained on the ballot and been a finalist. It was, however, marked as ineligible. Nobody knows why.
R. F. Kuang has since posted a statement that sums things up pretty well.
R. F. Kuang
There are quite a few other issues with the voting details. First and foremost the fact that Babel ‘s points never change , despite other books being eliminated and the points from their ballots being re-allocated (due to EPH – E Pluribus Hugo (google it, it’s too complicated to explain in a quick side note)). That’s… odd, to say the least. Now, it might be possible that not one single person who nominated any of the works that were eliminated also nominated Babel but we know of several people who have commented on other posts (over at Camestros Felapton’s blog or on Facebook and Reddit), who did in fact nominate both Ray Nayler’s book and R. F. Kuang’s book, as well as some others who nominated both  A Half-Build Garden and Babel . So once Emrys’s and Nayler’s novels were eliminated, the numbers for Babel should have shifted at least a bit. According to these nominating details, they didn’t.
And in case you think they just ignored the re-allocation of points because Babel was “ineligible” anyway, the points did change for Xiran Jay Zhao when other people on their ballot were eliminated. Same for the Sandman episode. So that’s not it.
Let’s not even talk about the fact that some categories show a finalist twice ( In the Serpent’s Wake in the Lodestar category ), one of which was corrected at least (in Best Novelette). Rachel Hartman’s YA novel would have made the ballot either way, but considering how long this WorldCon took to release the data, couldn’t we expect them to at least have checked it for mistakes?
Another highly unusual thing that I wouldn’t even have noticed, had cleverer people not drawn my attention to it, is the strange distribution of nominations across the longlist . In almost all categories, the top entries have very large nominating numbers and then there’s this sudden drop-off, called a cliff. I’ll let Heat her Rose Jones explain it, with pretty graphs and everthing . The TL:DR version of the (highly interesting) post is: the data is anomalous, even compared to a Puppy year. I urge you to read her post, however, as it is truly eye-opening. The graphics help see how weird everything appears to be even if you’re not a numbers person (I am most definitely not a numbers person
