2017 Hugo & Campbell Award Nominations Now Open

The 2017 Worldcon in Helsinki, Finland (Worldcon 75) has opened nominations for the 2017 Hugo Award and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer See the 2017 Hugo Awards page at the Worldcon 75 web site for full details.

Anyone who is or was a voting member of the 2016, 2017, or 2018 Worldcons by the end of the day on January 31, 2017 is eligible to nominate. You may nominate only once, regardless of how many of those three Worldcons you are a member.

Nominations close at 06:59 UTC on March 18, 2017 (March 17, 2017 23:59 North American Pacific Daylight Time / UTC – 7). The works/people receiving sufficient nominations in this first stage of the balloting will go on to the final ballot, which will be announced later in 2017. Only members of the 2017 Worldcon will be eligible to vote on the final ballot. The January 31 membership deadline does not apply to the final ballot, only the nominating ballot.

In general, works first published or appearing in calendar year 2016 are eligible for the 2017 Hugo Award. Works previously published in languages other than English but first published in English in 2016 are eligible. Works previously published outside of the USA but first published in the USA in 2016 are eligible.

Medium of publication is irrelevant: works published or appearing online are considered the same as if published in hard-copy form or shown on television or in theaters, including film festivals. Self-published works in any medium are eligible. Works published in multiple parts, such as serialized stories including graphic works, are eligible if their final part appeared in 2016. Detailed rules for the Hugo Award are contained in Article 3 of the World Science Fiction Society’s constitution.

Worldcon 75 has exercised its authority to add an additional category, “Best Series,” to the 2017 Hugo Awards. The definition of Best Series is substantially the same as that of a proposed new permanent Hugo Award category that received first passage at the 2016 Worldcon and that is up for ratification at the 2017 Worldcon.

There were a number of changes to the rules regarding the Hugo Award nominations ratified by the 2016 World Science Fiction Society Business Meeting. Most notably, there will be now six finalists in each category (members still make up to five nominations per category), and nominations will be tallied using a method designed to reduce the impact of “bloc” voting. Worldcon 75 has published a guide to what’s new with the Hugo Awards this year.

Direct specific questions about the 2017 Hugo Awards to the 2017 Hugo Award Administrators. Please do not ask specific questions about the 2017 Hugo Awards by commenting here or sending inquiries to TheHugoAwards.org. The team managing this web site does not actually run the individual awards, so we can only forward your questions to the current year’s Hugo Award Administrators, which will delay a reply.

Besides voting online (which requires a custom web link issued by the 2017 Worldcon), members can also vote using a paper ballot. Members of the current Worldcon will be receive paper ballots with the convention’s Progress Report 3. Contact the 2017 Hugo Award Administrators for alternative methods of nominating. Note that the online voting system allows you to make changes to your nominations until the close of nominations.

Note: In the interest of maintaining neutrality, we cannot approve any comments on TheHugoAwards.org promoting (or criticizing) specific works or people. If you post such a comment, we will not let it out of moderation. There are other venues (some of which are listed on the sidebar under “Third Party Recommendation Sites”) that are appropriate for discussing recommendations for the Hugo and Campbell Award. TheHugoAwards.org does not endorse any of the content of those sites.

15 thoughts on “2017 Hugo & Campbell Award Nominations Now Open

  1. If we are registered for Helsinki, in fact since early 2016, shouldn’t we have received notification for nominations by email? I have not.

  2. I have not yet received my unique personalized link to make nominations. It’s not in SPAM. I was an attending member of MidAmeriCon II. Who do I contact?

  3. Does having a novel printed through createspace on Amazon US count as having published a book in the U S of A?

    1. The Hugo Awards web site cannot give definitive answers regarding eligibility edge cases; however, on the surface it would appear that this would count as being published in the US.

    1. We cannot give a definitive answer because eligibility decisions are made by the current year’s Hugo Award Administrators not by the Hugo Awards Web Site, and the Administrators rarely will issue rulings on hypothetical cases. That is, the only way to know for certain would be for that work to receive sufficient nominations to qualify as a finalist; the Administrators would then decide whether it was eligible or not. The general interpretation of variant editions is that they have to be sufficiently revised so as to be considered a new work. For example, the short story “Flowers for Algernon” was subsequently revised and expanded to novel length, and both versions were Hugo Award finalists in different years. (The short story won the 1960 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.)

      In this case, this version is more of an abridged version, and is probably not sufficiently revised to be considered a new work. However, only the Administrators can give a definitive decision on the matter.

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