Helsinki to Trial Best Series

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

Worldcon 75 in Helsinki has announced that it will use its special powers to create one Hugo Award category to trial the proposed Best Series Hugo. This is in line with current tradition whereby seated Worldcons use their category creation power to test proposed new categories that have passed one Business Meeting and are up for ratification at the Worldcon in question. This gives members of WSFS an opportunity to see the category in action before voting on ratification.

The full text of the Worldcon 75 press release is as follows:
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1941 Retro Hugo Statistics Released

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

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.

2016 Hugo Awards Announced

~ Cheryl ~ 47 Comments

The 74th World Science Fiction Convention, MidAmeriCon II, announced the winners of the 2016 Hugo Awards at a ceremony on the evening of Saturday, August 20, 2016. The ceremony was hosted by Toastmaster, Pat Cadigan, assisted by Jan Siegel. 3,130 valid ballots were received and counted in the final ballot.

BEST NOVEL

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

BEST NOVELLA

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)

BEST NOVELETTE

“Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu (Uncanny Magazine, Jan-Feb 2015)

BEST SHORT STORY

“Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2015)

BEST RELATED WORK

No Award

BEST GRAPHIC STORY

The Sandman: Overture written by Neil Gaiman, art by J.H. Williams III (Vertigo)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM

The Martian screenplay by Drew Goddard, directed by Ridley Scott (Scott Free Productions; Kinberg Genre; TSG Entertainment; 20th Century Fox)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM

Jessica Jones: “AKA Smile” written by Scott Reynolds, Melissa Rosenberg, and Jamie King, directed by Michael Rymer (Marvel Television; ABC Studios; Tall Girls Productions;Netflix)

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM

Ellen Datlow

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM

Sheila E. Gilbert

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

Abigail Larson

BEST SEMIPROZINE

Uncanny Magazine edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, Michi Trota, and Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky

BEST FANZINE

File 770 edited by Mike Glyer

BEST FANCAST

No Award

BEST FAN WRITER

Mike Glyer

BEST FAN ARTIST

Steve Stiles

The 2016 Hugo Award trophy base was designed by Sarah Felix.

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (Not a Hugo Award, but administered along with the Hugo Awards) went to:

Andy Weir

Full details of the voting are available here (PDF).

2016 Hugo Awards Ceremony Tonight

~ Kevin ~ 6 Comments

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.

2016 Hugo Ceremony Coverage Plans

~ Kevin ~ 4 Comments

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.

Hugo Voter Packets Available

~ Kevin ~ 3 Comments

MidAmeriCon II, the 2016 Worldcon, has made available to its members selected Hugo Award finalists in reading packets, so that members can be better-informed voters. See the 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards voting page and the 2016 Hugo Award voting page. for the respective 1941 and 2016 Finalist Packets. In both cases, members will use their online voting information to access the Finalist Packets.

Hugo Finalists Packets are organized by the individual Worldcon committees, and obviously there is no requirement that a shortlisted work appear in the Packet. For questions about this year’s two sets of Finalist Packets, contact MidAmeriCon II. The Hugo Awards web site does not organize the Hugo Voter Packet or the voting on the Hugo Awards.

2016, 1941 Hugo Award Base Designers Announced

~ Kevin

MidAmeriCon II, the 2016 Worldcon, announced on June 13 via their Twitter feed that they have selected designers for the 2016 Hugo Award and 1941 Retrospective Hugo Award trophy bases. Sara Felix (president of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists) will design the 2016 Hugo Award base and Brent Simmons will design the 1941 Retro-Hugo Award base.

The Hugo Award trophy consists of a standard rocket design on a base. Each Worldcon is responsible for the bases for the Awards presented at their convention. In recent years, the design has been selected through an open competition judged by the current Worldcon committee.

Both the 2016 and 1941 bases will be revealed on August 17, 2016 at the opening ceremonies of MidAmeriCon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, at the Kansas City Convention Center in Kansas City MO. The trophies will be on display throughout the weekend at the convention. The 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards will be presented on Thursday, August 18, 2016 during the Retro-Hugo Swing Dance/Ceremony at MidAmeriCon II. The 2016 Hugo Awards will be presented at a ceremony on the evening of Saturday, August 20, 2016 at MidAmeriCon II.

Hugo Award Nominations Close March 31

~ Kevin

Nominations for the 2016 Hugo Awards, John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author, and 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards close at 23:59 Pacific Standard Time at the end of the day on Thursday, March 31, 2016. (That’s 06:59 GMT/UTC on April 1, 2016.) Anyone who was or is a member of the 2015, 2016, or 2017 World Science Fiction Conventions as of the end of January 2016 may nominate. Members may nominate up to five works in each category. Note that you can nominate as little as one work in one category. It is not necessary to fill out every space or to nominate in every category.

After nominations close, the Hugo Award Administrators will tally nominations, confirm eligibility, and begin contacting potential finalists. Under the rules of the World Science Fiction Society, every potential finalist must be given an opportunity to decline nomination to the shortlist. Once this process is complete, the current Worldcon, MidAmeriCon II, will announce the shortlist of finalists for each category. It typically takes several weeks to complete the eligibility and contact process. MidAmeriCon II said in a post on Twitter that the 2016 Hugo Awards shortlist will be announced on April 26. Voting on the final ballot will open May 15 May and close July 31.

Note that the people/works who appear on the final ballot are “finalists.” Historically the term “nominees” was used, but this term was officially deprecated by the World Science Fiction Society in favor of “finalist” in a change ratified in 2015. There appear to be some people who have been told by individual members that they’ve received one or more nomination votes in the nomination process, and have started billing themselves as “Hugo Award Nominees.” The term “Hugo Award Nominee” has no official meaning, and it does not mean that the work or person will be on the final Hugo Award ballot.