The 45th Annual Hugo Awards were announced on the 7th of August 1998 at the 56th World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore, Md., during a ceremony hosted by SF writer Charles Sheffield.
Nominations are as a result of ballots cast by the convention members who vote by mail.
They are counted using a weighted method whereby ballot entries, listed by preference, are assigned a value and then tallied. Those who fail to meet the cutoff or have the least number are dropped and the counting is redone until such time as a clear winner appears. The World Science Fiction Society gives the awards annually for achievements in science fiction.