The Hugo Awards | The Official Site of The Hugo Awards The Official Site of The Hugo Awards Posted on January 9, 2017 by Kevin Peter Weston, the man who created the current version of the iconic Hugo Award rocket, died on January 5, 2017, aged 73, according to a report published by Locus Online today . Although each Worldcon designs its own Hugo Award trophy base, since 1984, all metal Hugo Award trophy rockets have been cast from a mold created by Weston at the foundry he owned. (Non-metallic trophies followed the same design but were constructed using a different process.) Weston gave presentations about the making of Hugo Award rockets and made the presentation available to The Hugo Awards web site for us to preserve here. The World Science Fiction Society recognized Weston’s contributions to the Hugo Award by including his name in the WSFS Constitution after the original designers of the Hugo Award trophy, Jack McKnight and Ben Jason. Besides his contributions to the Hugo Awards, Weston chaired the 1979 Worldcon in Brighton, UK, and was Fan Guest of Honor at the 2004 Worldcon.

He edited anthologies and was a finalist for the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Related Work for his memoir, Stars in My Eyes: My Adventures in British Fandom. Posted on August 24, 2016 by Cheryl With apologies for the delay, we are now able to release the full voting breakdown for the 1941 Retro Hugo Awards. You can find the document here (pdf). We have also updated the 2016 statistics document to correct a small number of typographical errors in the original document. These did not affect the results of the Awards in any way, and all of the numbers were correct. The only significant change is in the top 15 for fancast where The Coode Street Podcast was incorrectly listed twice. The second listing should have been for Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, presented by Jay Edidin and Miles Stokes.

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Kevin The 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony is tonight, August 20, 2016, at 8 PM Central Daylight Time, at the Kansas City Convention Center Grand Ballroom (aka The Pat Cadigan Theatre, or more prosaically as Room 2501). Live video streaming of the 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony provided by MidAmeriCon II is at the UStream Hugo Awards page . Text-only coverage of the 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony through CoverItLive, suitable for lower-bandwidth connections, is in the window below. Our coverage of the ceremony will start just before 8 PM. Live Blog 2016 Hugo Awards Ceremony The CoverItLive feed is generally a few seconds to a few minutes ahead of the video streaming on UStream. Ad-free streaming of the 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony through UStream is sponsored by Worldcon 75 , the 2017 Worldcon in Helsinki, Finland. Internet connectivity for providing the video streaming of the 2016 Hugo Awards is sponsored by Harvest Productions .

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Kevin The designs of the 2016 Hugo Award trophy and 1941 Retrospective Hugo Award trophy were unveiled during the Opening Ceremonies of MidAmeriCon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, on the afternoon of August 17. In keeping with recent practice, MidAmeriCon II elected to showcase the trophy early in the convention so that members could see it before the final night of Worldcon. The trophy has been on display in the convention’s Hugo Award history exhibit since shortly after the convention’s Opening Ceremonies. While the Hugo Award trophy always includes the rocket originally designed by Jack McKnight and Ben Jason as refined by Peter Weston, each year’s Worldcon can design its own base. In recent years, most Worldcons have had an open design competition to design the Hugo Award base. The 1941 trophy base was designed by Brent Simmons and the 2016 trophy base was designed by Sara Felix. The 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards will be announced and presented at the Retro Hugo Swing Dance Ceremony on Thursday, August 18, 2016.

The 2016 Hugo Awards will be presented at a ceremony in Kansas City, Missouri on the evening of Saturday, August 20, 2016, starting at 8 PM CDT. The ceremony will be broadcast live on Ustream and described on the Hugo Awards web site as a CoverItLive Broadcast . Posted on August 16, 2016 by Kevin The 2016 Hugo Awards Ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, August 20, 2016 at 8 PM Central Daylight Time in the Kansas City Convention Center’s Grand Ballroom in Kansas City, Missouri. The Hugo Awards web site will once again offer text-based coverage of the Hugo Awards ceremony via CoverItLive, suitable for people with bandwidth restrictions. For those with the bandwidth for it, MidAmeriCon planns to offer live video streaming of the Hugo Awards ceremony via UStream. Details of the live-streaming coverage will be available at the 2016 Worldcon web site . Internet connectivity for providing the video streaming of the 2016 Hugo Awards is sponsored by Harvest Productions .

Ad-free streaming of the ceremony through UStream is sponsored by Worldcon 75 , the 2017 Worldcon in Helsinki, Finland. The Hugo Awards web site coverage team of Kevin Standlee, Mur Lafferty, and Cheryl Morgan will be “on the air” approximately fifteen minutes before the ceremony. You can sign up at the CoverItLive event site for an e-mail notification before the event starts. Remember that the CoverItLive text coverage is text-only, and is likely to not be in synch with the video streaming. Also, the CoverItLive team here at TheHugoAwards.org is not responsible for the video streaming coverage and cannot answer any questions about it. If you can’t be in Kansas City, we hope you’ll join us on CoverItLive or watch the ceremony on UStream. The 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards will be announced and presented at the Retro Hugo Swing Dance Ceremony on Thursday, August 18, 2016. The Retro-Hugo ceremony will not be streamed or otherwise broadcast, but the results will be published on the MidAmeriCon II and Hugo Awards web sites after the live presentations in Kansas City.

Nebula Award Winners and Hugo Award Winners for Best Novel on AbeBooks Home >Nebula Award Winners and Hugo Award Winners for Best Novel Nebula Award Winners and Hugo Award Winners for Best Novel by Richard Davies The Hugo Awards and the Nebula Awards are the traditional yardsticks for fantasy and science fiction writing and have been for decades. Winners are guaranteed a place in literary history and first editions of these acclaimed novels have become highly collectible. If money was no object and you wanted to create the ultimate modern science fiction and fantasy rare book collection in a single swoop, then you missed the boat - recently The Fine Books Company in Rochester, Michigan, offered first editions of all the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novels for a cool $116,530. The collection has now sold. The listing included 126 books covering 82 titles (many titles won both awards), and 95% of the titles were signed or inscribed, and in fine or better condition. When a paperback is the true first edition, then the first hardcover is also included. In some cases, US and UK hardcovers had been included where the paperback was the true first.

The Hugos began in 1953, the Nebulas started in 1965 and the list of books honored – by one or the other, or sometimes both - includes Dune by Frank Herbert, Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov, Neuromancer by William Gibson, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Both the Hugo and Nebula Awards are to be celebrated not only for their recognition and reward of science fiction writing, but also their dedication to the inclusion and consideration of lesser-known writers, and the resulting publicity to them. As well, the Hugo in particular is dedicated to excellence: in an unusual option, voters can select "no award" if they feel no entrant was worthy of being named. If the "no award" category receives the most votes, there will not be a winner named that year, although that has never occurred in the Best Novel category.

Both awards eschew exclusivity, as well, taking into account applicable selections from writers whose typical genre may not be strictly science fiction or fantasy, but literature or contemporary fiction. For example, Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policeman's Union took the Hugo in 2008. The Nebula Awards are handed out by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and their annual event celebrates the books of the previous year. The Hugos are chosen by members of Worldcon and the event is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories . A selection of Hugo and Nebula winners: Poking at Awards: The Early History of the Hugo and Nebula Awards - Pornokitsch Pornokitsch Wednesday, January 21, 2015 A few years ago, I stumbled on a copy of A History of the Hugo, Nebula and International Fantasy Awards by Donald Franson and Howard DeVore. It was published in 1978 by Misfit Press, and by "published", I mean this is actually mimeographed and bound with staples. It is wonderful.

It is also the gift that keeps on giving, especially when it comes to shining a light on the these awards' charming and chaotic early years. The Hugo Award The first Hugo Awards were given out at the Philadelphia World Science Fiction convention in 1953. From the first, the awards were decided by popular vote. That said, the nomination procedure - and the definition of 'the populace' - changed from year to year. In 1961 the germ of the present system became codified in Hugo law, as the organisers of that year's convention still allowed for public nominations, but changed it so only convention attendees could vote on the final ballot. In 1963, this was changed futher - so that only members of the current or previous convention could nominate. This is largely the system we now have today. (Well, except in terms of governance - the new WSFS constitution came about in 1974 and changed the definitions of everything, although the theory is still the same.) The number of prizes varied from year to year as the individual convention committees chose to add or subtract categories that they felt relevant. Other categories - such as Dramatic Presentation - came and went depending on interest.

The other area of turbulence was regarding the 'fan-ness' of the Hugo Awards. As Franson notes, polls for Fans and 'fan achievements' have ever been present in science fiction, including a few nods to the amateur in the early Hugos. But it wasn't until 1968 - and the demise of the a proposed "Fan Achievement Awards" - that the fan categories were absorbed into the Hugos proper. There are also various "special awards", including the ever-perplexing John W. Campbell Award (for Best New Author BUT IT ISN'T A HUGO) and the now-non-existent-but-wonderfully-named Gandalf Award. The Nebula Award The early days of Nebula Award, presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America, were no less chaotic. According to Franson and DeVore, the Awards themselves had a particularly prosaic beginning: "Shortly after the formation of the SFWA it became obvious to the officers that dues alone were not enough to support the organization, and that some additional revenue was needed.

Taking the example of the Mystery Writers of America, whose Edgar Awards have been for many years a hallmark of excellence, they conceived the idea of an annual anthology, part of whose income would go into the SFWA treasury." A sensible idea, although, rather ironically, the cost of the trophies and the awards banquet outstripped the SFWA's portion of the proceeds for the first few years. The selection process was also impressively chaotic, and, over the years, took several different forms. Sometimes a single ballot was used. Sometimes there was a two ballot system, to strip down the number of nominations from the single ballot. Sometimes there was an Australian system (like the Hugos). Sometimes a combination of several of the above. Sometimes a single ballot was used with every nominated story appeared on it, but with no instructions on where to find those stories. All in all... messy. Furthermore, although ostensibly for science fiction, DeVore notes that "no reasonable definition has have been offered" and has always been left up to the membership to decide. As DeVore concludes: "Some authors have complained that the fans are constantly changing the rules, definitions of the Hugo Awards and were not very businesslike.

After a dozen years of the Nebula Awards, it would appear the writers haven't done much better." What's particularly interesting - at least from a historical perspective - is how close these awards were. Not only were there not a lot of votes in these early years, but often the winning work achieved its lofty status by the skin of its teeth. Still, as they say, the winners write history, and we're more likely to remember "who won" than "who snuck on the ballot by a single vote". An annotated timeline of the early Hugo and Nebula Awards 1953 Hugo Awards: First Hugo Awards happen. 1954 Hugo Awards: Second Hugo Awards don't happen, because... not sure. 1955 Hugo Awards: Resumption of Hugo Awards. 1957 Hugo Awards: WorldCon takes place in London. The British irritate everyone by only having prizes for publications and stripping out the author and artist categories. Thus begins the long tradition of fun results for non-American WorldCons. 1959 Hugo Awards: First year with shortlists.

"No Award" wins the movie category, pipping The Fly, The Horror of Dracula and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad in what is unquestionably the GREATEST SCANDAL IN HUGO AWARDS HISTORY. "No Award" had a good year overall, also taking home the "Best New Author" category (Brian Aldiss - 2nd). 1963 Hugo Awards: "No Award" wins Dramatic Presentation again - this time beating out The Twilight Zone and The Day The Earth Caught Fire. 1964 Hugo Awards: There were a total of 164 ballots received. The winning novel (Simak's Here Gather the Stars) stormed to victory with 63 votes. Best Dramatic Presentation was dropped as a category because no one cared. 1965 Hugo Awards: Gollancz makes the ballot for Best Publisher but loses to Ballantine. (Are they still around?). Best Dramatic Presentation is back! Even though it wasn't on the nominating ballot, everyone wrote in Dr Strangelove. 1965 Nebula Award: The first year of the Nebulas! There are four categories, and two of them are won by Roger Zelazny.

1966 Hugo Awards: 6000 ballots were distributed by the convention... 160 were returned. Best Dramatic Presentation is dropped from the final ballot again, this time due to an "overwhelming 'no award' response" at the nominating round. A special award - The Best All-Time Series - was won by Foundation, although there's much debate over whether or not Lord of the Rings should even have qualified. (The Wheel of Time is still 24 years away from publication.) 1968 Hugo Awards: All five nominees for Best Dramatic Presentation were Star Trek episodes. Harlan Ellison wins Best Short Story, is nominated for an episode of Star Trek and receives a special plaque for editing Dangerous Visions. Clearly an amateur, he's also a finalist for "Best Fan Writer" but then withdraws. (Glad to know that category has never made sense.) 1968 Nebula Awards: A WOMAN WINS A NEBULA! In the prize's fourth year, Anne McCaffrey picks up Best Novella for "Dragonrider". The glass ceiling is broken and science fiction immediately transforms into a shining bastion of equality for all time.

1968 Hugo Awards: A WOMAN WINS A HUGO! "Weyr Rider" wins Best Novella (a tie with Farmer's "Writers of the Purple Wage". 1970 Hugo Awards: A WOMAN WINS BEST NOVEL! A mere 17 years after the first Hugo Award, a woman claims the best novel category. The Left Hand of Darkness earns Ursula LeGuin the Best Novel.* [This has been edited, as I'd missed out on Anne McCaffrey's 1968 novella win - see comments. ] HALTIME. Here are some fun facts while the kettle boils: The next woman to win a Hugo in one of the writing categories? Ursula LeGuin! (Novella, in 1973. And then Short Story in 1974. And then Novel again in 1975). The next female author not named "Ursula" to win a literary Hugo was James Tiptree Jr in 1974 (...who wasn't revealed to be Alice Sheldon until 1977).

The next woman who wasn't either Ursula Le Guin or writing under a male pen name to a writing Hugo was Kate Wilhelm, in 1977. 1970 Nebula Awards: The awards introduced a multiple ballot system, where there are preliminary nominations and then the final ballot. Joanna Russ' And Chaos Died received the most preliminary nominations (9!), but lost the final vote to Larry Niven's Ringworld. Only 9 novels received multiple preliminary nominations. Ill Met in Lankhmar won the Novella category, despite receiving a single nomination. "No Award" won Best Short Story. DeVore noted that many SFWA members said that were confused by the ballot and thought they were abstaining - oops.Donald Westlake's "The Winner" received 3 preliminary nominations in the Short Story category, but did not make the final ballot. Meanwhile, Locus appears on the "Fanzine" ballot for the first time. 1970 Hugo Awards: The winner of Best Dramatic Presentation was the "news coverage of Apollo XI". This is kind of awesome. Also an interesting precedent. 1971 Hugo Awards: 732 final ballots! A computer was used! Locus wins.

1971 Nebula Awards: Only four novels received multiple nominations in the preliminary voting. Robert Silverberg later won both Novel and Short Story - but in the preliminary balloting, both works only had a single nomination. (Hmm....) The Exorcist was also nominated, but did not make the final ballot. 1972 Nebula Awards: The eventual winner, Asimov's The Gods Themselves, also received the most preliminary votes (17). Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives (1) and Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (3) also received nominations, but not enough to make the final ballot (7 needed). Joanna Russ picked up Short Story for "When It Changed" (only 3 preliminary votes - trailing, amongst others, her own "Nobody's Home" [4]). Rather amusingly, it seems that every story in Again, Dangerous Visions was nominated either 3 or 4 times. 1973 Hugo Awards: George R.R. Martin loses the inaugural John W. Campbell Not-Hugo Award for Best New Writer to Jerry Pournelle.

1973 Nebula Awards: Gravity's Rainbow receives 7 nominations (tied with Rendezvous with Rama) and makes the final ballot before losing (to Rama). 1974 Hugo Awards: 930 final ballots! Time for a bigger computer! 1974 Nebula Awards: A new system - works are nominated throughout the year, then a jury (LeGuin, Niven, Herbert, Joe Green, Carol Emshwiller) selects items for the final ballot. LeGuin wound up winning both novel with The Dispossessed (the most nominated novel, with 19) and short story ("The Day Before the Revolution"). Scandal! Also remarkable: there was a novel on the final ballot called The Godwhale. Even more remarkable: Woody Allen wins a Nebula. 1975 Hugo Awards: The convention was in Australia - there were 267 nominating ballots and 600 final ballots. Young Frankenstein won best Dramatic Presentation (the competition was Zardoz). The Dispossessed won with a simple majority: ironically, the Australian balloting method wasn't needed.

1975 Nebula Awards: Jury again - this time composed of Ted Cogswell, Frank Herbert, George RR Martin and Vonda McIntyre. 1976 Hugo Awards: Tanith Lee was disqualified from the Best New Writer Not-Hugo because she had been previously published. Phil Foglio appears on the ballot for the first time (Fan Artist - 2nd place finish). 1977 Hugo Awards: Tanith Lee was disqualified again from the Best New Writer Not-Hugo. Phil Foglio, however, wins Fan Artist. Star Wars is given a special award for being Star Wars. However, the Best Dramatic Presentation category goes to the classic "No Award" (losers include: Carrie, Logan's Run and The Man Who Fell to Earth.) 1978 Hugo Awards: 540 nominating ballots and 1246 final ballots. The Already-Hugo-Award-Winning Star Wars wins best Dramatic Presentation Hugo (with a majority on the first count). Orson Scott Card wins the Best New Writer Not-Hugo, pipping Stephen Donaldson (2nd), Jack Sterling (3rd), Elizabeth Lynn and Bruce Sterling.

[Also worthy of note - if I'm reading the footnotes correctly, this year the category was officially changed from "Amateur Magazine" to "Fanzine". (I may be misunderstanding DeVore notes, but this would be interesting to confirm as the whole "Fanzine" vs "Blog" discussion continues.)] 1979 Hugos: 1160 final votes. Stephen Donaldson wins the New Writer Not-Hugo on his second try. David Langford was a finalist for the first time for best Fanzine and best Fan Writer. (He would go on to be nominated every year until 2009, with 19 straight wins between 1989 and 2007.) Science Fiction Aficionados - Books: Hugo vs Nebula - differences (showing 1-18 of 18) Oct 18, 2011 05:12AM Spurred on by the Quest to read every joint Hugo-Nebula winner, I wondered what the differences were between the 2 major awards. In particular, which books won one award, but weren't even nominated for the other.

The lists are below (with the usual caveats about errors and omissions). Hugo Winners not even nominated for Nebulas To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Philip Jose Farmer - 1972 Downbelow Station - C. J. Cherryh - 1982 Cyteen - C. J. Cherryh - 1989 Hyperion - Dan Simmons - 1990 The Vor Game - Lois McMaster Bujold - 1991 Mirror Dance - Lois McMaster Bujold - 1995 Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson - 1997 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J. K. Rowling - 2001 Hominids - Robert J.

Sawyer - 2003 Spin - Robert Charles Wilson - 2006 Rainbows End - Vernor Vinge - 2007 The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman - 2009 Nebula Winners not even nominated for Hugos Timescape - Gregory Benford - 1981 No Enemy But Time - Michael Bishop - 1983 The Falling Woman - Pat Murphy - 1988 The Healer's War - Elizabeth Ann Scarborough - 1990 Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin - 1991 Slow River - Nicola Griffith - 1997 The Moon and the Sun - Vonda N. McIntyre - 1998 Parable of the Talents - Octavia E. Butler - 2000 The Quantum Rose - Catherine Asaro - 2002 The Speed of Dark - Elizabeth Moon - 2004 Camouflage - Joe Haldeman - 2006 Seeker - Jack McDevitt - 2007 Powers - Ursula K.

Le Guin - 2009 I'd hoped to see some obvious pattern in the differences, such as the Nebulas being more "literary", but I don't think there's anything obvious. What do you all think? Oct 18, 2011 01:05PM The difference is just that they are two awards given out by two different societies. This is what I found by Googling them: The Nebula Awards are administered, voted and presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) to acknowledge excellence in science fiction writing. The Hugo Awards are organized and overseen by the World Science Fiction Society, the awards are given each year at the annual World Science Fiction Convention as the central focus of the event. So voting on either of these awards are open to members of either the SFWA or the WSFC respectively. Each award has several categories you can vote on, and they are not the same for every award, but there are many similarities. There's no genre difference for Hugos vs Nebulas. It's just a matter of which group voted on them.

Oct 18, 2011 01:21PM Pia wrote: "...But is this a small winner sample size out of a larger one? Or is this all of them that fit your category? ..." This is all of the winners which didn't even get nominated by the other award. Although there are another 12 Hugo winners (some retrospective) from before the Nebulas started. As for reading them, in addition to the 22 winning both awards, I think there are another 39 Hugo winners and 26 Nebula winners (both inc ties). But then there are some 64 nominated for both (winning neither), 136 nominated for only Hugos, and 167 nominated for only Nebulas - Over 450 books which have been nominated for at least one of the awards! (It's a bit complicated with some ties and some being withdrawn.) I did the research because I was wondering if I could read all the nominees, but the very large number has rather put me off...

Pia wrote: "Hmmm, now you've made me curious which books won each award but also had been nominated for the other award." Herewith (seeing as I've got it to hand), hope it's useful: Hugo winners nominated for (but not winning) Nebulas: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Heinlein, Robert A. Lord of Light - Zelazny, Roger Stand on Zanzibar - Brunner, John Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - Wilhelm, Kate The Snow Queen - Vinge, Joan D. Foundation's Edge - Asimov, Isaac The Uplift War - Brin, David Barrayar - Bujold, Lois McMaster A Fire Upon the Deep - Vinge, Vernor Green Mars - Robinson, Kim Stanley The Diamond Age - Stephenson, Neal To Say Nothing of the Dog - Willis, Connie A Deepness in the Sky - Vinge, Vernor Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Clarke, Susanna The City & the City - Mieville, China Nebula winners nominated for (but not winning) Hugos: Babel-17 - Delany, Samuel R.

Flowers for Algernon - Keyes, Daniel The Einstein Intersection - Delany, Samuel R. Rite of Passage - Panshin, Alexei A Time of Changes - Silverberg, Robert Man Plus - Pohl, Frederik The Claw of the Conciliator - Wolfe, Gene Falling Free - Bujold, Lois McMaster Stations of the Tide - Swanwick, Michael Red Mars - Robinson, Kim Stanley Moving Mars - Bear, Greg The Terminal Experiment (mg title: Hobson's Choice) - Sawyer, Robert J. Darwin's Radio - Bear, Greg Oct 19, 2011 09:21AM The Nebulas are awarded by science fiction writers and only science fiction writers can be members of the SFWA to nominate and vote on books for the awards. The Hugos are open to nominations and voting from anyone who wants to pay at various supporting levels. In both cases, I think it's mostly a popularity contest, just voted on by a different set of fans. I don't know that either award is voted on by any sort of independent book critic group.

I'm also not convinced that some of the voting isn't just from friends and fans who either haven't read the work nominated or have not read all the works nominated in the category to judge the relative merits. Oct 19, 2011 11:45AM Pia wrote: "...I think Tad meant popularity-contest merit as opposed to writing-quality merit--I think, because he mentioned wondering whether the books are even read. I've heard that complaint before about th..." I think any awards, book awards, Oscars, etc., is subjective to the body that is voting for it. Plus there are folks out there shilling their books to the committee members/members, just like the pre-Oscar ads in Vanity Fair magazine. If anything, looking over the nominees are a good guideline to what has been popular in any given year. To me, that's about all an award is good for. I always thought the entire concept of it was silly. Oct 19, 2011 01:45PM As Pia said, everything, including writing quality is subjective. Blackout by Connie Willis is a good example.

The writing is ok but it is not her best work, in my opinion, and has been accused of being poorly researched or at least containing historical inaccuracies. I find it hard to believe that there was not a better book eligible, let alone worthy of winning. Her legions of fans and popularity with other writers though give her a leg up in both awards. So back to the original post, I think the difference between the two awards is more personal popularity of the author among the two nominating and voting groups. Other "literary" awards like the Nobel or the Booker for example, will nominate less known or less popular works (the winners are seldom to my taste). These types of awards tend to eschew genre works but I view them as more objectively evaluating the quality of the work. I own all the Hugo award winners (or at least I did before some of the retroactive Hugos) and of the ones I've read, I find them to be widely divergent in quality and the amount of personal interest they hold for me. Susinok is right, they're a good measure of what's popular in a given year, but that's about it.

Oct 19, 2011 03:11PM Pia wrote: "...Sffgeek, I'm curious if you've chosen to read anything from the lists yet?" I'm really interested in this for longer term planning. I've already read 8 of the 22 Hugo+Nebula winners. Of the rest, I'm planning on buying The Domesday book, as I've never read Connie Willis. The others are for my longer-term reading list - I've currently got 22 on my to-read (ie soon) list, and 57 on my more-to-read list. Never mind the other 144 unread books I own but currently have no plans for... I've probably read most of the winners and nominees from the 50's 60's and 70's - but I would have got them out of the library back then, and I can't remember them all(!) EDIT: Although I've put the remaining 13 (?) joint winners on my possibles shelf (for future purchase), they're mostly dte - I've already read the ndte ones because those are what I prefer.

Oct 20, 2011 03:08AM Pia wrote: "It looks like you've got a lot of reading to do in your future..." The trouble is, I'm a bit like a kid in a sweetie shop - with a bag full of sweets, but still loooking around to see if there's anything even more exciting on the shelves... I suppose that's why I've been interested in the award winners - are there any "new" authors (ie in the last 20 years!) that I haven't sampled. One effect of being really old and crumbly, is that your perspective is different. Not only is any writer who first published after 1990 still only a beginner, but I still think of the Nebula Award is a new-fangled thing - it didn't start till I was at university! Oct 20, 2011 06:48AM I created an excel spreadsheet last week that listed all the Hugo and Nebula winners in chronological order by publication date. I dont want to read just "joint" winners, so I plan on reading all of them. I may be getting ahead of myself there.

Ive always thought of the Hugo's as being a bit more forgiving in the way of fantasy. Normally I dont go for the whole "award" thing, but of the books I've read that are featured on the lists I do like them- a lot. So I might as well try them all. I also want to make some headway into the SF Masterworks series, I also have that on an excel chronologically by publication date. I've been considering merging the two lists, havent decided yet. Oct 20, 2011 09:10AM Becky wrote: "I created an excel spreadsheet last week that listed all the Hugo and Nebula winners in chronological order by publication date..." Yes, I've got a spreadsheet too, now. It'd be interesting to compare them, but I don't know how. There's plenty of information on the 'net, but not in the format I wanted. And there's always some borderline cases - like do you include withdrawn nominees? I also wondered about merging the SF Masterworks, but as that's a commercial venture, with its own priorities, I decided against it. For instance, can they get the rights to all the award winners?

And is their list skewed towards books that are out of copyright? So I'm just going to use them as a source of the older books when I get round to buying them. Oct 20, 2011 09:16AM I havent added nominees for the awards, I figured there were 87 winners already,I'd have enough to read. Currently I have the SF Masterworks series as its own thing exactly becuase it is a commercial venture (but then, so are the awards in their way). As for the SF masterworks most of the books are still in copyright. I find this unfortunate, I love books to be out of copyright becasue then I can get them on Gutenberg and Librivox. Oh well. I'm upset with them because they dont include any H. Beam Piper, but that might be just me. If anything its a reference point for ideas on books that I might enjoy someday. I really love to see the history of the genre unfolding, and its a decent source for that.

sfadb : Hugo Awards Hugo Awards 1960 1959 1958 1957 1956 1955 1954 1953 1952 1951 The Hugo Awards are the premier awards in the Science Fiction field, given annually since the early 1950s years in over a dozen categories, for best books, stories, dramatic works, and professional and fan activities. The rocketship-shaped trophies represent the committed fan and professional SF community, voters with paid memberships to the annual World Science Fiction Conventions. Scope Novels, short fiction, dramatic presentations, related works, editors and artists, and fan activities -- in principal, in any language, though in practice, works in English What A trophy in the shape of a rocket ship, on a base whose design is up to each year's convention committee Where & When At the annual World Science Fiction Convention, hosted in a different city each year, usually in August or around the US Labor Day holiday. Process Members of past and current years' World SF Convention nominate up to five items per category.

The top five items in each category are placed on a final ballot, which is voted on by current members. Final results in each category are determined via the 'Australian ballot preference system': all first-place votes are tabulated; the entry with the fewest votes is eliminated; second-place votes from eliminated ballots become first-place votes; this is repeated until a nominee achieves a majority. For second-place, the winner's votes are dropped, and second-place votes from those ballots become first-place votes, and the process is repeated. And so on for third and fourth places. History The awards are named after Hugo Gernsback, founder of Amazing Stories magazine in 1926 and widely regarded as the 'father' of the science fiction genre. The idea of presenting awards at the annual World SF Convention was originally a one-off by the 1953 convention in Philadelpha; the idea was revived two years later in Cleveland, and continued from then every year, though the selection of categories varied in the early years. Hugo and Nebula Awards Hugo Award Nebula Award When I was growing up, I became extremely interested in science fiction. Maybe it was escapist and maybe it was just because it combined some of the facts of science with my imagination.

In any case, I read a ton of science fiction; about a book a week over ten years. Over the last thirty years, two book awards have been given out annually: the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award . Although I've slowed down in recent years, I have nonetheless read most of the award-winning books listed in the following table. When the book was particularly memorable, I have included a few of my reflections on why I think it was really worthwhile to read. Books marked with ** are those few books that have won both the Hugo Award and the Nebular Award. Fourteen books since 1965 have won both awards. All books listed below are available through Amazon.com . Year Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin 1989 Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough 1988 Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold 1987 Falling Woman by Pat Murphy 1986 Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card** 1985 Neuromancer by William Gibson** This book foretold the future coming of the hacker community.

While still futuristic in terms of the human/machine interface, this novel continues to channel the near-term future. The grittiness of this book, in combination with other books by Gibson, has created a unique alternative universe completely controlled by corporate fiefdoms Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card** I remember reading a short version (novella?) of this book before I got the full novel and thinking how powerfully it presented a case for the inhumanity of war as it relates to the training of the young. It may be even scarier now as high-tech remote weapon systems have converted warfare into something more like a big video game. 1984 Startide Rising by David Brin** This wonderful book portrays mankind's entry into a universe of sentient races where man occupies the low rung on the ladder, with allies but without a sponsor race. This is the first of several novels (continued in Uplift War ) that outline an alternative universe. 1982 Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh Most science fiction books present the human characters as almost fearless explorers of the universe. Not in Cherryh's books.

In this book (as in Cherryh's other books), the lead characters are fearful even as they explore. While disconcerting at first, I came to realize that in many ways this is more realistic because, while man is curious, there is no telling when you will unknowingly come across something more powerful that could crush you. Man Plus by Frederik Pohl 1975 Forever War by Joe Haldeman** 1974 Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke** Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin** 1973 Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke** 1972 The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov** 1971 Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg 1970 Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin** Ringworld by Larry Niven** This book was one of the first books that really nailed the definition of 'hard' science fiction for me. Every fact is theoretically possible, albeit highly imaginative, and it all hangs together in a compelling story. As a plus, this book fits into the alternative future envisioned by Niven in a number of his other books.

1969 Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner This is an enormously powerful book that reflects the chaos and coming of age of the 60s generation as I think back on the time period in which it was written. I didn't appreciate this book when I first read it nearly as much as I do now. Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin** 1968 Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin 1967 The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein This libertarian tale of the lunar colony struggling to reach for independence continues to catch my imagination thirty years after I read it for the first time. Maybe it was the self-deprecating commentary from the lead character or maybe it was because the struggle for freedom in a harsh environment wasn't so unlikely. Still one of my favorites even though it is a bit simplistic. Einstein Intersection by Samuel R.

Delany 1966 And Call Me Conrad by Roger Zelazny Dune by Frank Herbert** Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 1965 Wanderer by Fritz Leiber Dune by Frank Herbert** This book was an eye-opener for me; it's one of the real classics of the genre. I first read (and re-read) this book one summer when I was working on a farm in what must have been sometime around 1974. The range and scope of this novel made it wonderful. 1964 Way Station by Clifford D. Simak Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein Case of Conscience by James Blish Big Time by Fritz Leiber (No award for best novel) Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein They'd Rather Be Right by Frank Riley and Mark Clifton Hugo Award Winners Join Hugo Award Winners The Hugo Awards are given every year for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year.

The award is named after The Hugo Awards are given every year 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. Organized and overseen by the World Science Fiction Society, Hugos are given each year at the annual World Science Fiction Convention as the central focus of the event. The awards were first given in 1953, at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention, and have been awarded every year since 1955. Over the years that the award has been given, the categories presented have changed; currently Hugo Awards are given in more than a dozen categories, and include both written and dramatic works of various types. Nebula Awards: “International SF” and Problems of Identity - SFWA Nebula Awards: “International SF” and Problems of Identity Our sister site, NebulaAwards.com has an essay by Larry Nolan on “International SF” and Problems of Identity We live in a world that increasingly is not defined by national borders.

Depending on where one goes, one can hear “Me encanta,” “Ich liebe es,” or “Love ko ‘to” whenever a McDonald’s jingo plays on the radio or television. Levi’s, the quintessential American blue jeans, are not made in the United States anymore, but in factories across the globe. Watch many of the “Adult Swim” shows on the Cartoon Network in the US and one is bound to find Japanese anime-influenced animation. In some ways, the “global village” espoused by Hillary Clinton and others over the past two decades has come to fruition. But what about Science Fiction? Why is there such a buzz happening now, over two decades after many other pop cultural trends, for “international” SF? What has taken so long for a literary/cultural mode to catch up? These questions may be nigh impossible to address adequately in a short article, but they do bear some consideration, especially as we move toward potential conflicts within and outside the various “international” groups of SF writers and fans.

November 24, 2009 November 25, 2009 at 8:19 pm Didn’t Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC [21 July 1911 – 31 December 1980] coin the term “global village” no later than his book War and Peace in the Global Village (1968)? Is this perhaps being confused with It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (1996)? On wikipedia: “In the early 1960s, McLuhan wrote that the visual, individualistic print culture would soon be brought to an end by what he called ‘electronic interdependence’: when electronic media replace visual culture with aural/oral culture. In this new age, humankind will move from individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity, with a ‘tribal base.’ McLuhan’s coinage for this new social organization is the global village.” Wikipedia today hands us this footnote: Wyndham Lewis’s America and Cosmic Man (1948) and James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake are sometimes credited as the source of the phrase, but neither used the words “global village” specifically as such.

According to McLuhan’s son Eric McLuhan, his father, a Wake scholar and a close friend of Lewis, likely discussed the concept with Lewis during their association, but there is no evidence that he got the idea or the phrasing from either; McLuhan is generally credited as having coined the term. Eric McLuhan (1996). “The source of the term ‘global village'”. McLuhan Studies (issue 2). . Retrieved 2008-12-30. Featured Book When a story breaks, the multiverse is thrown into chaos. It’s up to the Genrenauts to put the narrative back on track…at any cost.

Question: What are the Hugo and Nebula awards given for?
Answer: Science Fiction Writing