For the second time in 10 years, insiders of the World Science Fiction Convention (colloquially known as “Worldcon”) have bent their own rules in an attempt to police the bounds of what books and writers are to be seen as acceptable science fiction and fantasy. This time, they’ve done so on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.
Worldcon is an annual convention held in a different city every year. At each Worldcon, attendees, in addition to people who pay for non-attending memberships, vote on where the convention will be held in the future and also vote to determine who will receive the awards, most famously including the once-prestigious Hugo Awards. Despite this peripatetic nature, Worldcon has a core group of participants who return year after year. These participants often refer to themselves as “fans” and, collectively, as “fandom.”
Fandom leans left and can be very cliquish. Many fans have been attending Worldcon for decades and see it as something like their science fiction family reunion. Since Worldcon has always been attended by industry professionals — writers, editors, and agents — as well as fans, the convention has been a useful networking event for aspiring creatives, but always within the social context of fandom.
However, there is a clique of insiders that has unusual sway over what happens at Worldcon and the Hugo Awards. It is comprised of writers and editors associated with a small number of the largest science fiction and fantasy publishers, as well as their friends and allies
