Hugo Award
The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) and chosen by its members. The award is administered by the World Science Fiction Society. The Hugo is widely considered the premier award in the science fiction genre,[1] and winners are often noted on book covers. It is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. Hugos were first given in 1953, at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention, and have been awarded every year since 1955.
Not to be confused with the Gold and Silver Hugo Awards for film and television at the Chicago International Film Festival.Hugo Award
Best science fiction or fantasy works of previous year
1953
The awards were originally given in seven categories. These categories have changed over the years, and the award is currently conferred in seventeen categories of written and dramatic works. The winners receive a trophy consisting of a stylized rocket ship on a base; the design of the trophy changes each year, though the rocket itself has been standardized since 1984.
The 2023 awards were presented at the 81st Worldcon in Chengdu, Sichuan, China, on October 21, 2023. The 2024 awards will be presented at the 82nd Worldcon, "Glasgow 2024", in Scotland on August 11, 2024.
History[edit]
1950s[edit]
The first Hugo Awards were presented at the 11th Worldcon in Philadelphia in 1953, which awarded Hugos in seven categories.[19] The awards presented that year were initially conceived as a one-off event, though the organizers hoped that subsequent conventions would also present them.[20] At the time, Worldcons were completely run by their respective committees as independent events and had no oversight between years. Thus there was no mandate for any future conventions to repeat the awards, and no set rules for how to do so.[21]
The 1954 Worldcon chose not to, but the awards were reinstated at the 1955 Worldcon, and thereafter became traditional. The award was called the Annual Science Fiction Achievement Award, with "Hugo Award" being an unofficial, but better known name.[6] The nickname was accepted as an official alternative name in 1958, and since the 1992 awards the nickname has been adopted as the official name of the award.[14][22]
For the first few years, Hugo Awards had no published rules, and were given for works published in the "preceding year" leading up to the convention, which was not defined but generally covered the period between conventions rather than calendar years. In 1959, though there were still no formal guidelines governing the awards, several rules were instated which thereafter became traditional. These included having a ballot for nominating works earlier in the year and separate from the voting ballot; defining eligibility to include works published in the previous calendar year, rather than the ambiguous "preceding year"; and allowing voters to select "No Award" as an option if no nominated works were felt to be deserving of the award.[23] "No Award" won that year in two categories: Dramatic Presentation and Best New Author.[24] The eligibility change additionally sparked a separate rule, prohibiting the nomination of works which had been nominated for the 1958 awards, as the two time periods overlapped.[23]
1960s[edit]
In 1961, after the formation of the WSFS to oversee each Worldcon committee, formal rules were set down in the WSFS constitution mandating the presenting of the awards as one of the responsibilities of each Worldcon organizing committee. The rules restricted voting to members of the convention at which the awards would be given, while still allowing anyone to nominate works; nominations were restricted to members of the convention or the previous year's convention in 1963.[23] The guidelines also specified the categories that would be awarded, which could only be changed by the World Science Fiction Society board.[25] These categories were for Best Novel, Short Fiction (short stories, broadly defined), Dramatic Presentation, Professional Magazine, Professional Artist, and Best Fanzine.[26] 1963 was also the second year in which "No Award" won a category, again for Dramatic Presentation.[27]
In 1964 the guidelines were changed to allow individual conventions to create additional categories, which was codified as up to two categories for that year. These additional awards were officially designated as Hugo Awards, but were not required to be repeated by future conventions.[28] This was later adjusted to only allow one additional category; while these special Hugo Awards have been given out in several categories, only a few were ever awarded for more than one year.[8]
In 1967 categories for Novelette, Fan Writer, and Fan Artist were added, and a category for Best Novella was added the following year; these new categories had the effect of providing a definition for what word count qualified a work for what category, which was previously left up to voters.[29][30] Novelettes had also been awarded prior to the codification of the rules. The fan awards were initially conceived as separate from the Hugo Awards, with the award for Best Fanzine losing its status, but were instead absorbed into the regular Hugo Awards by the convention committee.[23]
1970s[edit]
While traditionally five works had been selected for nomination in each category out of the proposed nominees, in 1971 this was set down as a formal rule, barring ties.[23] In 1973, the WSFS removed the category for Best Professional Magazine, and a Best Professional Editor award was instated as its replacement, in order to recognize "the increasing importance of original anthologies".[31][32]
After that year the guidelines were changed again to remove the mandated awards and instead allow up to ten categories which would be chosen by each convention, though they were expected to be similar to those presented in the year before. Despite this change no new awards were added or previous awards removed before the guidelines were changed back to listing specific categories in 1977.[23][33] 1971 and 1977 both saw "No Award" win the Dramatic Presentation category for the third and fourth time; "No Award" did not win any categories afterwards until 2015.[34][35]
1980s and 1990s[edit]
In 1980 the category for Best Non-Fiction Book (later renamed Best Related Work) was added, followed by a category for Best Semiprozine (semi-professional magazine) in 1984.[36][37] In 1983, members of the Church of Scientology were encouraged by people such as Charles Platt to nominate as a bloc Battlefield Earth, written by the organization's founder L. Ron Hubbard, for the Best Novel award; it did not make the final ballot.[38] Another campaign followed in 1987 to nominate Hubbard's Black Genesis; it made the final ballot but finished behind "No Award".[39][40] 1989 saw a work — The Guardsman by Todd Hamilton and P. J. Beese — withdrawn by its authors from the final ballot after a fan bought numerous memberships under false names, all sent in on the same day, in order to get the work onto the ballot.[41]
In 1990, the Best Original Art Work award was given as a special Hugo Award, and was listed again in 1991, though not actually awarded, and established afterward as an official Hugo Award.[22][42] It was then removed from this status in 1996, and has not been awarded since.[43] The Retro Hugos were created in the mid-1990s, and were first awarded in 1996.[7]
Since 2000[edit]
Another special Hugo Award, for Best Web Site, was given twice in 2002 and 2005, but never instated as a permanent category.[44][45] In 2003, the Dramatic Presentation award was split into two categories, Long Form and Short Form.[46] This was repeated with the Best Professional Editor category in 2007.[47] 2009 saw the addition of the Best Graphic Story category, and in 2012 an award for Best Fancast was added.[48][49] Best Series was added as a permanent category in 2018; it was run the year prior as a special Hugo Award prior to being ratified at the business meeting.[50] Another special Hugo Award, for Best Art Book, was run in 2019 but was not repeated or made a permanent category.[51] The 2021 Hugo Awards featured a special Hugo award for video games. It was thereafter proposed as a permanent category; it was not repeated as a special Hugo Award in 2022 or 2023, but was ratified as the Best Game or Interactive Work category, beginning in 2024.[52][53][54]
Recognition[edit]
The Hugo Award is highly regarded by observers. The Los Angeles Times has termed it "among the highest honors bestowed in science fiction and fantasy writing",[82] a claim echoed by Wired, who said that it was "the premier award in the science fiction genre".[1] Justine Larbalestier, in The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (2002), referred to the awards as "the best known and most prestigious of the science fiction awards",[83] and Jo Walton, writing in An Informal History of the Hugos, said it was "undoubtedly science fiction's premier award".[3] The Guardian similarly acknowledged it as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction" as well as "one of the most venerable, democratic and international" science fiction awards "in existence".[84][85] James Gunn, in The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1988), echoed The Guardian's statement of the award's democratic nature, saying that "because of its broad electorate" the Hugos were the awards most representative of "reader popularity".[86] Camille Bacon-Smith, in Science Fiction Culture (2000), said that at the time fewer than 1,000 people voted on the final ballot; she held, however, that this is a representative sample of the readership at large, given the number of winning novels that remain in print for decades or become notable outside of the science fiction genre, such as The Demolished Man or The Left Hand of Darkness.[87] The 2014 awards saw over 1,900 nomination submissions and over 3,500 voters on the final ballot, while the 1964 awards received 274 votes.[88][89][90] The 2019 awards saw 1,800 nominating ballots and 3,097 votes, which was described as less than in 2014–2017 but more than any year before then.[91]
Brian Aldiss, in his book Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, claimed that the Hugo Award was a barometer of reader popularity, rather than artistic merit; he contrasted it with the panel-selected Nebula Award, which provided "more literary judgment", though he did note that the winners of the two awards often overlapped.[92] Along with the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award is also considered one of the premier awards in science fiction, with Laura Miller of Salon.com terming it "science fiction's most prestigious award".[93]
The official logo of the Hugo Awards is often placed on the winning books' cover as a promotional tool.[94][95] Gahan Wilson, in First World Fantasy Awards (1977), claimed that noting that a book had won the Hugo Award on the cover "demonstrably" increased sales for that novel,[96] though Orson Scott Card said in his 1990 book How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy that the award had a larger effect on foreign sales than in the United States.[97] Spider Robinson, in 1992, claimed that publishers were very interested in authors that won a Hugo Award, more so than for other awards such as the Nebula Award.[87] Literary agent Richard Curtis said in his 1996 Mastering the Business of Writing that having the term Hugo Award on the cover, even as a nominee, was a "powerful inducement" to science fiction fans to buy a novel,[98] while Jo Walton claimed in 2011 that the Hugo is the only science fiction award "that actually affects sales of a book".[3]
There have been several anthologies of Hugo-winning short fiction. The series The Hugo Winners, edited by Isaac Asimov, was started in 1962 as a collection of short story winners up to the previous year, and concluded with the 1982 Hugos in Volume 5. The New Hugo Winners, edited originally by Asimov, later by Connie Willis and finally by Gregory Benford, has four volumes collecting stories from the 1983 to the 1994 Hugos.[99] The most recent anthology is The Hugo Award Showcase (2010), edited by Mary Robinette Kowal. It contains most of the short stories, novelettes, and novellas that were nominated for the 2009 award.[100]