Super disappointing, yeah. I’ve worked a bit with Dave McCarty during a previous Worldcon and this sort of ham-handed self-censorhip is not what I would have expected of him. Even if something like that was more or less a foregone conclusion from the moment Chengdu won the bid, I would have at hoped that he’d at least let the local Worldcon committee bear responsibilty, rather than being a willing and proactive partner.

That said, as the report that this article is based on points out, that the premier award in SF and fantasy literature is joined at the hip with Worldcon is a bit awkward, and even when the hosting country doesn’t have repressive and omnipresent government censorship, the local mores and tastes are going to have an impact on voting. Not that it’s bad for non-American or non-Western viewpoints and fandoms to carry weight in the voting, but maybe it’d be better to separate the administration of the Hugos from that of Worldcon, and develop a vetting and voting process that can be consistently and deliberately inclusive, rather than being at the mercy of whose hosting bid wins in a given year? Seems like it would be important to resolve this sooner rather than later, given that Egypt is in the running to host in 2026 and Saudi Arabia has made perennial bids for the convention as well.