纽约时报中文网 - 英文原版-英Some Authors Were Left Out of Awards Held in China Leaked Emails Show Why
February 19, 2024 3 min 462 words
这篇报道揭示了在中国颁奖典礼中一些作者被忽略的内幕，通过泄露的电子邮件呈现了其背后的原因。这暴露了中国文学领域存在的评奖不公现象，引发人们对言论自由和艺术独立性的担忧。这种偏袒背后可能隐藏着政治干预，损害了文学奖项的公信力。作为观点犀利的新闻评论员，我们应当对这类行为保持警惕，坚决捍卫言论自由和艺术独立，以确保文学奖项真正体现对创作者的公正评价，而非被政治权力左右。
The Hugo Awards, a major literary prize for science fiction, have been engulfed in controversy over revelations that some writers may have been excluded based on their perceived criticism of China or the Chinese government.
Suspicions in the science fiction community have been building for weeks that something was amiss with last year’s awards, which rotate to a different city each year, and in 2023 were hosted in Chengdu, China. Now, newly released emails show that the awards were likely manipulated because of political concerns.
Here’s what we know.
What are the Hugo Awards?
The awards, first established in 1953, are given annually at a gathering hosted by the World Science Fiction Convention. Writers are nominated and awarded prizes by members of the World Science Fiction Society, which includes science fiction fans. Each person can nominate five works for each category. Those entries are then tallied so that the six works with the most votes become finalists. Previous winners have included luminaries like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson and Philip K. Dick.
Why were writers, and fans, upset?
In January, the Hugo Awards revealed which writers had been nominated for last year’s awards, and by how many people. The information made clear that multiple authors who had enough nominations to be finalists were shut out of the process; award administrators had marked them as not eligible, without specifying a reason. Among the excluded authors were two Western writers of Chinese descent: R.F. Kuang, who is Chinese American and who was widely expected to be recognized for her novel “Babel,” a historical fantasy set in mid-1800s Oxford, and Xiran Jay Zhao, a Chinese Canadian author whose novel “Iron Widow” is a sci-fi reimagining of China’s female emperor.
“I assume this was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility,” Kuang posted on Instagram in January. “Excluding ‘undesirable’ work is not only embarrassing for all involved parties, but renders the entire process and organization illegitimate.”
What did the leaked emails reveal?
The exclusion of popular authors of Chinese descent led to speculation that the awards’ administrators had weeded out those whose political views might prove controversial in China. Those suspicions were confirmed recently, when emails leaked by Diane Lacey, a member of last year’s Hugo administration team, were published in a report by Chris M. Barkley, a science fiction fan and journalist, and Jason Sanford, a journalist and science fiction writer.