Please Stop Turning into Monsters, Mainstream.

Apparently, in his copious spare time, an author of many good Russian sf/f books named Sergei Lukyanenko has endorsed war crimes against Ukrainians.

Now, I know this could be some kind of government frame-up… but apparently it’s not.

So. Yeah. Instead of getting caught committing or supporting sex crimes or crimes against kids, we’ve got one supporting war crimes, that just _include_ sex crimes and crimes against kids. Yay.

This torques me off, because I looked into Lukyanenko’s work and advocated for people to read him, back when the movies Night Watch and Day Watch came out, as adaptations of his books. There’s also an eerie resemblance to his Night Watch protagonist getting co-opted into occasional but extreme evil, by getting too cozy with the magical version of the government of his country. I haven’t followed him for the last decade, but I just figured he was getting on with his writing.

(It’s a particularly weird situation, because he was born out in Central Asia on the Russian side of things; and he is a person of Ukrainian ancestry who hates Ukraine’s existence as a separate country, and forbids translation of his books into Ukrainian!)

Also, in our current anti-God world, and since the Russians are temporarily buddied up with the Communist Chinese (until their next sudden and inevitable mutual backstabbing), Lukyanenko is one of two guests of honor at this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, which is being held in China.

Apparently the last Worldcon’s operating meeting (in 2022) passed a resolution calling for Lukyanenko to be disinvited as GoH, but the Chengdu con committee declined to follow this call. (And btw… Ben Yalow raised a point of order, but purely to protect Worldcon legalities by bringing it up. To do such a thing, at such a tense moment, is truly a moment of nerd courage.)

The Worldcon committee probably should have disavowed Chengdu’s convention at this point, given that they are incorporated in the US, and then they could have made the NASFIC convention the official Worldcon. But that hasn’t happened.

(The other GoH is Liu Cixin, who has announced that Uyghurs, way out in the wilds of Asia, are all terrorists who really need to be in concentration camps. He openly referred to genocide and slave labor as “economic development.” So I guess it’s no longer The Three Body Problem; it’s The Million Corpse Problem.)

Worldcon is also being held in Chengdu, a lovely city which used to be a center of Buddhism. It now persecutes Buddhists, traditional Chinese beliefs, and Christians of all denominations. Besides arrests of people of all religions, there has been confiscation of their properties and houses of worship.

Oh, and one of the editor GoHs was disinvited for being Jewish. Yeah.

The first Worldcon took place in New York City in 1939, with a bunch of young fans worried about their European relatives. But this time, Worldcon is actually trying for that 1936 Olympics vibe. Yay.

Andrew Gill Smith, whose book Our Lady of the Artilects somehow got nominated for a Hugo despite advocating for Uyghurs in the actual book, is being hassled online by some kind of CCP “water army” of professional trolls.

So obviously the CCP has no confidence in the Hugo Awards being fixed adequately. Which is interesting.

—

I think we should ask for the intercession of some of China’s earlier generations of martyrs, because they are also associated with Chengdu, which is in Sichuan.

St. Gabriel-Taurin Dufresse, bishop, was martyred in Chengdu on Sept. 14, 1815.

St. Augustine/Si-ding Zhao Rong, priest, worked as a soldier in Chengdu and was converted after meeting Fr. Dufresse as an escort for his journeys (before the persecutions started, when Dufresse was in favor). He was martyred on Jan. 27, 1815.

St. Joseph/Ruose Yuan Zaide, priest. He was from Peng in Sichuan, and was martyred in Chengdu on June 24, 1817.

St. Paul/Baolu Liu Hanzuo, underground missionary priest. He worked as a vegetable seller by day, and secretly sang Masses and performed priestly duties at night. Martyred at Execution Square at the East Gate in Jinjiang, Chengdu, on Feb. 13, 1818.

St. John/Ruowang Chen Xianheng, lay catechist. Born in Chengdu. Martyred on February 18, 1862, in Kaiyang, Guiyang, Guizhou.

Please pray for the safety of everyone involved in this against their will, and for Andrew Gill Smith; and that justice will come for the CCP’s victims and prisoners.

Also, please pray for the conversion of heart and amendment of life of Sergei Lukyanenko and Liu Cixin.