As per our tweet earlier today, Aussiecon 4 has opened nominations for the 2010 Hugo Awards. And being in Australia, which started 2010 long before most of us, they were very quick off the mark indeed. You can find the ballot at their web site.

As usual, the nominating stage of the process is open to anyone who was a member of last year’s Worldcon, Anticipation in Montréal, and to anyone who buys at least a supporting membership in Aussiecon 4. In order to give the Aussiecon 4 folks time to process memberships before the ballot closes you must buy your membership by January 31st. Supporting membership prices are as follows: US $50; AU $70; € 35; £25; ¥4,900. You can buy them online here.

Fans around the world are already discussing which works and people to nominate. You may wish to check the third party recommendation sites listed in our right-hand sidebar. If you are unsure about the eligibility of online works because of the changes to the WSFS Constitution that were made in Montréal you may find this public statement by Aussiecon 4’s Hugo Award Administrator helpful. And please remember that Best Graphic Story is now an official category so you can keep nominating such works.

The deadline for submitting nominating ballots is 23:59 PST on Saturday, March 13, 2010.

Voting on the Final Ballot for this year’s Hugo Awards closes on Friday. You can vote online (click here for the voting form), but please don’t leave it until the last minute. We don’t want to overload Anticipation’s servers. Also make sure you know your PIN now. You’ll need it to vote.

The deadline for submitting nominations for the 2009 Hugo Awards is fast approaching. You must complete your ballot before midnight (PST) on Saturday, February 28th. You can find the online ballot here (aussi ici en Français).

Please do not wait until Saturday night to cast your ballot. We can’t guarantee that some part of the Internet won’t have problems at the most inconvenient time.

In order to participate in the nomination stage of this year’s Hugo awards you must either have been a member of last year’s Worldcon, Denvention 3, or you need to buy at least a Supporting Membership in this year’s Worldcon, Anticipation, by the end of January. Memberships are available online (en Français).

The nominating period for the 2009 Hugo Awards is open and the online ballot is available (en Francais). In order to nominate you must have been a member of the 2008 Worldcon, Denvention 3, or be a member of the 2009 Worldcon, Anticipation. The deadline for receipt of nominations is the end of February, but if you are not yet qualified to nominate you must purchase your Anticipation membership before January 31st. A “Supporting Membership” in Anticipation is sufficient to obtain Hugo Award nominating and voting rights. You do not have to attend the convention in order to participate.

Further information on Anticipation memberships is available from their web site. For more information on how to participate in the Hugo Awards see our helpful guide.

The nominating period for the 2008 Hugo Awards closes at midnight (Pacific Standard Time) on Saturday March 1st (Saturday night on the US west coast). Nominations must be received by then in order to be counted. Please do not leave voting until the last minute. Online voting is almost instantaneous, but any small technical problem could result in your ballot being delayed.

In order to participate in the Nominations stage of this year’s Hugo Awards you must either have been a member of the 2007 Worldcon (Nippon 2007), or you must purchase at least a Supporting Membership in the 2008 Worldcon (Denvention 3) by the end of January. Supporting Memberships are $50 and can be upgraded to Attending Memberships later. You can buy a Denvention 3 membership online here.

This year’s deadline for casting nominating ballots is March 1st. You can find a downloadable ballot or vote online here.

The nominating period for the 2008 Hugo Awards is now open. The awards are being administered by the 2008 World Science Fiction Convention (Denvention 3). You can find their online ballot here.

The nominations process is open to members of the World Science Fiction Society. To be a member of WSFS you must have either been a member of the 2007 Worldcon (Nippon 2007) or you must be a member of Denvention 3. Only a supporting membership of the Worldcon is required; you do not have to attend the convention. For Denvention 3 the cost of a supporting membership is $50. This also entitles you
to various Denvention 3 publications and gives you the right to vote in the Final Hugo Ballot for 2008, the Hugo Nominating Ballot for 2009, and the Worldcon Site Selection Ballot for 2008 (which chooses where the 2010 Worldcon will be held). You can buy memberships for Denvention 3 here.

No special qualifications (other than WSFS membership) are required to participate in the nominating progress. The Hugo Award system recognizes that no one individual can possibly hope to read/see every eligible work in the field. Instead WSFS members are encouraged to nominate up to five works/individuals in each category that they believe are worthy of a Hugo. The most popular nominees will go forward to the Final Ballot.

In general the Hugo Awards are open to works published in the year of eligibility (in this case 2007). By special dispensation of the 2007 WSFS Business Meeting, eligibility has also been extended to any works published outside of the USA prior to 2007 but first published in the USA in 2007. The list of eligible works is vast, but various fans and organizations maintain recommendation lists of likely candidates. See the list of Third Party Recommendation Sites in the sidebar to the right for links to some of these lists.

The deadline for receipt of nominating ballots is midnight (Pacific Standard Time), Saturday March 1st, 2008. However, in order to participate you must have purchased your Worldcon (Nippon 2007 or Denvention 3) membership by January 31st, 2008.

More details about Hugo Award eligibility are available here. Please note that you do not have to submit your work for it to be eligible. More information about the voting process is available here.