Hugo Award for Best Fancast

The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was previously officially known as the Science Fiction Achievement Award. It has been described by The Guardian and Litro Magazine as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction" and "the best known literary award for science fiction writing".
The Hugo Award for Best Fancast is awarded to the best non-professional audio or video periodical devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects. The fancast must have released four or more episodes by the end of the previous calendar year, at least one of which appeared in that year, and it must not qualify for the dramatic presentation category. It must also not provide or be published by an entity that provides a quarter or more of the income of any one person working on the fancast. The name of the award is a portmanteau of fan and podcast. The Hugo Award for Best Fancast was first proposed as a category after the 2011 awards, and then appeared as a temporary category at the 2012 awards. Temporary awards are not required to be repeated in following years. The 2013 awards, however, did repeat the category, and afterwards it was ratified as a permanent category, and will appear in all future years.
Hugo Award nominees and winners are chosen by supporting or attending members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon, and the awards presentation constitutes its central event. Supporting members are those who do not attend the convention itself, and pay a smaller membership fee as a result. The selection process is defined in the World Science Fiction Society Constitution as instant-runoff voting with six nominees, except in the case of a tie. The fancasts on the ballot are the six most-nominated by members that year, with no limit on the number of fancasts that can be nominated. Initial nominations are made by members in January through March, while voting on the ballot of six nominations is performed roughly in April through July, subject to change depending on when that year's Worldcon is held. Prior to 2017, the final ballot was five works; it was changed that year to six, with each initial nominator limited to five nominations. Worldcons are generally held near the start of September, and are held in a different city around the world each year. Members are permitted to vote "no award", if they feel that none of the nominees is deserving of the award that year, and in the case that "no award" takes the majority the Hugo is not given in that category. This happened in the Best Fancast category in 2016.
During the 6 years the award has been active, 19 fancasts by 56 people have been nominated, and 4 of those fancasts have won. SF Squeecast, created by a team of five people, won the award in both 2012 and 2013, and declined to be nominated for 2014. SF Signal Podcast, run by Patrick Hester, won the 2014 award, and Galactic Suburbia Podcast, run by Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Andrew Finch, won the 2015 award. No award was given in 2016, and Tea and Jeopardy, by Emma Newman and Peter Newman, won in 2017 on its third nomination.
==Winners and nominees==
In the following table, the years correspond to the date of the ceremony, rather than when the story was first published. Entries with a blue background have won the award; those with a white background are the other nominated works.
  *   Winners
Year	Fancast 	Editor(s) 	Ref.
2012	SF Squeecast* 	, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente 	
2012	 	and Gary K. Wolfe 	
2012	Galactic Suburbia Podcast 	, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Andrew Finch 	
2012	SF Signal Podcast 	, JP Frantz, and Patrick Hester 	
2012	StarShipSofa 	 	
2013	SF Squeecast* 	, Paul Cornell, Seanan McGuire, Lynne M. Thomas, Catherynne M. Valente, and David McHone-Chase	
2013	 	and Gary K. Wolfe 	
2013	Galactic Suburbia Podcast 	, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Andrew Finch 	
2013	SF Signal Podcast 	, JP Frantz, and Patrick Hester 	
2013	StarShipSofa 	 	
2014	SF Signal Podcast* 	 	
2014	 	and Gary K. Wolfe 	
2014	Galactic Suburbia Podcast 	, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Andrew Finch 	
2014	 	, Jen Zink, Julia Rios, Paul Weimer, David Annandale, Mike Underwood, and Stina Leicht 	
2014	Tea and Jeopardy 	 	
2014	Verity! 	, Erika Ensign, Katrina Griffiths, L. M. Myles, Lynne M. Thomas, and Tansy Rayner Roberts 	
2014	 	and Ian Mond 	
2015	Galactic Suburbia Podcast* 	, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Andrew Finch 	
2015	Adventures in SF Publishing	, Kristi Charish, Timothy C. Ward, and Moses Siregar III 	
2015	Dungeon Crawlers Radio 	, Travis Alexander, Scott Tomlin, Dale Newton, and Damien Swenson 	
2015	 	 	
2015	Tea and Jeopardy 	and Peter Newman 	
2016	(no award)+ 	 	
2016	8-4 Play 	, John Ricciardi, Hiroko Minamoto, and Justin Epperson 	
2016	Cane and Rinse 	Cane, Rinse 	
2016	HelloGreedo 	HelloGreedo 	
2016	The Rageaholic 	RazörFist 	
2016	Tales to Terrify 	, Scott Silk, and Philip Oldham 	
2017	Tea and Jeopardy* 	and Peter Newman 	
2017	 	and Gary K. Wolfe 	
2017	Ditch Diggers 	and Matt Wallace 	
2017	Fangirl Happy Hour 	and Renay Williams 	
2017	Galactic Suburbia Podcast 	, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Andrew Finch 	
2017	The Rageaholic 	RazörFist 	
==References==
==External links==
* Hugo Award official site
Fancast
Category:Podcasting awards