EVERY INSTITUTION HAS BEEN CORRUPTED: Inside the Censorship Scandal That Rocked Sci-Fi and Fantasy’s Biggest Awards. “Three months later, the truth came out when McCarty shared the Hugo nominating statistics on Facebook: Someone had stolen nominations from The Sandman legend Neil Gaiman, Babel author R. F. Kuang, Iron Widow novelist Xiran Jay Zhao, and fan writer Paul Weimer. All four of them earned enough votes to be finalists—and therefore eventually winners—but for unknown reasons, someone had secretly marked their works as ‘ineligible’ after the first rounds of voting. . . . When McCarty finally shared last year’s nominating statistics on his Facebook page, authors, fans, and finalists were shocked. In the history of the awards, no works had ever been deemed ineligible like this. Many people who had expected Kuang to win for Babel were now stunned to see she very well could have, and McCarty’s refusal to explain what happened made everything worse. (McCarty did not respond to interview requests for this story.)”

Plus: “All four ‘ineligible’ writers have criticized the Chinese Communist Party or its policies at some point in the past.” Insiders deny that was a factor, but . . .