Troubling censorship at the 2023 Hugo Awards in China?

wait wait wait I just found out RF Kuang and I were deliberately excluded from the Hugo Awards in Chengdu last year for unspecified reasons despite having the votes to be finalists in our categories?? pic.twitter.com/838Bq0U1rW

— 𝕏iran * PREORDER HEAVENLY TYRANT (@XiranJayZhao) January 21, 2024

John Scalzi:

There’s a new controversy with this last year’s Hugo Awards, involving, among other things, a number of potential nominees declared ineligible for not-at-all-clear reasons, including R.F. Kuang’s novel Babel, which was a presumed front runner before the finalist lists came out. Rather than try to explain the controversy myself (I have been away this weekend and am still catching up), I am going to point you to this piece by Cora Buhlert, which features links to other posts/articles exploring this recent uproar. I will note that at this point everything is at the “what the hell?!?” stage, and the rumors and speculation are just that, rumor and speculation

Kuang's post at Bluesky.

Discussion at Reddit and Metafilter. These two feeds also have good discussions.

(No comment from the Hugos themselves from what I saw.)

Update: The Guardian's summary