We’re Having Hugo Drama… Again

Apparently, we are not able to get through an awards season without Hugo drama and Worldcon drama in general. Especially since I really don’t have time for this right now, cause I have to prepare for three cons where I’m on programming, plus I’m still trying to write a story every day and I also have to work to pay for food, power (just ordered the yearly supply of oil for the furnace), books, toys, Worldcons and other essentials.

So since I’m busy, this is going to be a fairly short post, amended as and if necessary.

Earlier today, in the Hugo finalist Discord (which I founded, so I’m active there, even though I’m not a finalist this year), finalists were talking about receiving an e-mail about a virtual town hall meeting for all finalists that was set up on short notice. These virtual meetings are not unusual and usually involve logistical issues and since I’m not a finalist this year, I didn’t pay much attention.

Anyway, it turns out that the Glasgow Hugo administration team dropped a bombshell at this virtual town hall meeting and later also in a public statement, which can be found here. There’s also a YouTube video of the statement by 2024 Hugo administrator Nichlas Whyte, which has some additional information.

Basically, it turned out that there had been an attempt to stuff the Hugo ballot by someone or rather someones buying a large number of supporting membership with blatantly false names like several variations of the same name (John L. Smith, John S. Smith, Joan Smith, Joanne Smith, J. Smith, etc…) as well as consecutive numbers. These fake members bullet-voted for a particular finalist and generally submitted very unusual ballots.

The Hugo team caught this and disqualified 377 obviously fraudulent votes altogether, which is almost ten percent of the total. The finalist who was the beneficiary these fraudulent votes was not disqualified and has not been publicly named, since there is no evidence that they were aware of any of this.

This is obviously a big deal and even though there have been attempts to game finalists onto the ballot before, I don’t think any person, entity or group has ever attempted to manipulate the final voting, since it takes many more votes to win a Hugo than to make the ballot. Also, a supporting a.k.a. WSFS membership costs 50 US-dollars, so this is also quite expensive – roughly 19000 US-dollars – so whoever is behind this has deep pockets. Thankfully, they were also clumsy and didn’t even consider using a name generator or otherwise hiding their trail.

I applaud Nicholas Whyte and the Glasgow Hugo team for transparency in what must have been a difficult decision, because Hugo ballots are not disqualified lightly, and also for keeping the name of the finalist in question out of this.

That said, speculations are obviously flying high, both among finalists and the general public. I’ve been told that some of the fake member names were visible on the public membership list until fairly recently and I have seen screenshots, but most of those names seem to have been removed. The list of countries of origin of Worldcon members broken down into membership categories is also interesting.

John/ErsatzCulture noticed the membership weirdness some time ago and took screenshots, which he shared on Twitter. He also points out that the Glasgow statement refers merely to a finalist and notes that there are more Hugo categories than just the fiction categories.

Of course, this is all just speculation. We don’t know who the finalist in question is, though we can make some educated guesses, and we will probably be able to tell for sure when the detailed voting data is released, though the fraudulent ballots have been removed.

There is some discussion about this issue in the comments at File 770 and Camestros Felapton’s blog.

Also, considering a WSFS membership includes privileges other than Hugo voting, may I remind you to vote in site selection for the 2026 Worldcon this year, if you’re an attending or supporting Worldcon member. The race seems uncontested, since the only bid is for Los Angeles, California, but write-ins are a possibility.

Finally, in other, better news, the finalists for the 2024 Ignyte Awards have been announced today. I don’t cover the Ignytes in detail in this blog, because I have only so much bandwidth, but they alway have interesting finalists, including some that are overlooked by other genre awards. I’m particularly happy to see my good friends of the Simultaneous Times podcast on the Ignyte ballot this year.