The relevancy of the Hugo Awards has fallen to yet new lows, as now Adrian Tchaikovsky, the Hugo Award for Best Series winner, has decided to give back his award. His series “Children of Time” won Worldcon Chengdu under nebulous circumstances, which have caused both the author and others, such as cross-dressing activist John Scalzi to chime in on the awards’ failure.
Chengdu Worldcon has been embattled for months as it was revealed that the Hugo Awards committee colluded with the communist Chinese government to exclude certain people and works from being eligible for the awards. While it was quiet initially, once Neil Gaiman chimed in to voice how sad he was he couldn’t be nominated, the talk of the awards being nothing more than a farce went viral.
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None of the people involved seem self-aware in this matter to where the Hugo Awards have been gamed and rigged since 2015 when the gatekeepers in science fiction publishing stood up against real fans and readers to try to keep out the most popular works in the field from getting awards.
Since then, very few people have been paying attention to the Hugo Awards as Worldcon has revised its rules to ensure it wasn’t something that represented the whole readership and fandom but simply their niche of identity politics activists. While people like Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi were completely fine with that, they suddenly feigned outrage when the rules were used against them and their friends.
Adrian Tchaikovsky posted a virtue-signaling blog about his experience with Chengdu Worldcon and the Hugo Awards for his Children of Time series win, saying:
Based on this information, I cannot consider myself a Hugo winner and will not be citing the 2023 award result in my biographical details, or on this site.
The Hugo Awards have the potential to be a respected pillar of the international fan community. I would be delighted to be considered, honestly and on my own merits, for such an award in the future. I look forward to systemic changes so that future awards can be administered with an eye to clarity, equity and accountability.
This statement amounts to nothing as Adrian Tchaikovsky gets to keep the award for Children of Time and privately reap the benefits as his work will get posted elsewhere with the credential. The author points out something interesting: the Hugo Awards “have the potential,” which implies they are not any kind of respected pillar of science fiction fandom. This was the case before Chengdu Worldcon, as normal people have all but tuned out from these awards, but now the science fiction publishing elite are outraged.
John Scalzi couldn’t help but make the matter about himself, posting to the left-wing echo chamber BlueSky, “It makes me genuinely angry that one primary result of the 2023 Hugo fiasco has been to steal the joy of writers whose work so richly deserves praise, both in the finalist and the winner camp, and in the camp of those who should have been finalists. It’s unforgivable, and for what? What was gained?”
The Tor Books author of cat stories followed up, “I didn’t expect to be a finalist at all BECAUSE the Worldcon was in China, and it’s arguably the largest market for science fiction in the world, and I expected them to have their own nominees for novel! And when they didn’t, I was a little sad about it. Now, of course, I’m sadder and angrier.”
None of the science fiction elites have had a public thought that they might want to apologize to Larry Correia, Sarah Hoyt, Brad Torgerson, and Vox Day, among others, for all of the hate and vitriol they heaped upon these authors because of the original rigging of the Hugo Awards against what fandom wanted.
What do you think of Adrian Tchaikovsky renouncing his Hugo Award for Children of Time and John Scalzi’s comments on Chengdu Worldcon? Leave a comment and let us know.
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Rank among lieutenants, virtue among Hugo award winners.
“It’s unforgivable, and for what? What was gained?”
Clout, Johnny Boy, just like always–or at least that was the attempt until WorldCon bungled it.
With you and your crowd, it’s always clout and virtue chasing.
Have fun running around the dog track, Gamma Rabbit.
I’m not all that familiar with Adrian Tchaikovsky to be honest. My local Barnes & Noble did have his books prominently displayed on the shelves with one of them marked as an employee recommendation (I forget the title of it). While I’m glad he doesn’t consider himself “a Hugo winner and will not be citing the 2023 award result in my biographical details, or on this site”, he doesn’t state that he’s returning the statuette to Worldcon. That makes me assume then he’s keeping it. I would have been more impressed if he had said that he wanted Worldcon to remove his name from any listings they have as him being a Hugo winner. I personally wouldn’t want my name associated with a scandal of this magnitude, but that’s just me.