lydamorehouse | (Reply)

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I keep having to pick my jaw up off the floor AGAIN after reading some new revelation or wrinkle. The combined ignorance and arrogance of the non-Chinese members of the Hugo committee just floors me. I've often thought very experienced members of the Permanent Floating Worldcon Committee, or people who have repeatedly worked on Worldcon without for some reason being in that group, might be oblivious and stubborn or have strange opinions or whatever, but I never would have believed that they would get up to this kind of nonsense. I thought they were well-meaning and had good practical experience.

Reading the cleaned-up transcript of Chris Barkley's interview with Dave McCarty, the latter seemed in an advanced state of stress hardly distinguishable from some kind of altered experience. I imagined him talking to Chinese fans and making bizarre interpretations and acting on them, living in some imaginary China whose rules he must follow to protect his new friends. He seemed completely divorced from reality while believing he had the best inside knowledge to make things work right.

Psychoanalyzing people just because I'm a writer doesn't seem very helpful, but that interview was so very strange. The truth, which it's unlikely we'll ever arrive at, is probably both much more mundane and way way weirder.

I too think that the Hugos can be fixed, but it can't be done by the "Trust us, we're such experienced amateurs that we amount to professionals in this one task" gang. We did and they aren't.

P.