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Update, March 26: The issue with the list hosting is resolved. Thanks for your patience while we corrected the issues.
Ben Yalow, who has extensive and long-running experience with Worldcons, the World Science Fiction Society, and the Hugo Awards, has written a history of the Hugo Awards that bears reading by anyone with an interest about how the Awards work and how they have evolved over time to their current form. Ben provided an extensive amount of information for A Short History of the Hugo Awards here at The Hugo Awards web site.
The 2016 Worldcon in Kansas City (“MidAmericon II”) has opened nominations for the 2016 Hugo Award and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and for the 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards for works published in 1940. See the 2016/1941 Hugo Awards Nominating Information page at the MidAmeriCon II web site to make your nominations.
US President Obama has been open about his interest in science fiction. He had the new Star Wars film screened at the White House before heading off to Hawaii for his Christmas holiday. He is also a very keen reader, and we were delighted to hear that one of the books he took with him for holiday reading was last year’s Hugo Award winner for Best Novel, The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu translator and published by Tor Books.
We hope you enjoyed the book, Mr. President. And do let us know if you have any recommendations for this year’s Hugos.
The 2016 World Science Fiction Convention (“MidAmericon II”) has announced an open competition to design the base of the 2016 Hugo Award. The deadline for submitting a proposed design is January 18, 2016.
The Hugo Award trophy consists of a rocket design standardized since 1984 on a design by Peter Weston and registered as a service mark by the World Science Fiction Society. Worldcon committees design the base, and most recent Worldcons have conducted competitions to select a design.
Full details including the specifications and submission guidelines, are on the 2016 Worldcon web site. Direct any questions about the competition to the 2016 Hugo Base Competition Subcommittee, not to the Hugo Awards web site.
The 2015 Worldcon’s Official Photographer, Olav Rokne, has published an album of official photos of the 2015 Hugo Awards and 2015 Worldcon Masquerade.
In addition, the designer of this year’s Hugo Award trophy, Matthew Dockrey, has provided design notes and additional professional photographs of the 2015 Hugo Award trophy that we have incorporated into this year’s trophy design page
A replay of the live video streaming of the 2015 Hugo Awards Ceremony, including the pre- and post-show analysis and interviews, is now available through Livestream.com.
The large initial demand to watch the live coverage of the 2015 Hugo Awards Ceremony exceeded the capacity purchased by the 2015 Worldcon, and therefore replays of the ceremony were not available until the convention could make alternative arrangements.
Edited to add: Since the initial publication of this post, the recording of the UStream feed once again was made available on the Hugo Awards UStream Channel.
The 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, Sasquan, has announced the 2015 Hugo Award winners. 5950 valid ballots were received and counted in the final ballot.
The members of the World Science Fiction Society rejected the slate of finalists in five categories, giving No Award in Best Novella, Short Story, Related Work, Editor Short Form, and Editor Long Form. This equals the total number of times that WSFS members have presented No Award in the entire history of the Hugo Awards, most recently in 1977.
Those categories in which there were Awards presented are listed below. For the full breakdown of voting and nomination see here.
The 2015 Hugo Awards Ceremony is scheduled for tonight, Saturday, August 22, 2015 at 8 PM Pacific Daylight Time in the INB Performing Arts Center in Spokane, Washington. Live video streaming of the 2015 Hugo Awards ceremony via UStream will be available through Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention. Sasquan’s coverage of the ceremony starts one hour before the ceremony (7 PM PDT) with “The Road to the Hugos”, a livestreamed Internet pre-and-post Hugo broadcast featuring hosts Stephen Schapansky and Warren Frey of Radio Free Skaro. They will return after the ceremony for an hour of post-ceremony interviews and analysis.
For those with lower bandwidth, 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 with our text-only CoverItLive coverage of the event. Our coverage of the event will be in the window below.
Please note that the CoverItLive coverage is not synchronized with the UStream coverage and is likely to run ahead of the UStream broadcast.
The design of the 2015 Hugo Award trophy was unveiled during the Opening Ceremonies of Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention, on the afternoon of August 19. In keeping with recent practice, Sasquan 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. This year’s trophy base designer Matthew Dockery appeared in the Opening Ceremony and unveiled the trophy there.
The 2015 Hugo Awards will be presented at a ceremony in Spokane, Washington on the evening of Saturday, August 22, 2105, starting at 8 PM PDT. The ceremony will be broadcast live on Ustream and described on the Hugo Awards web site as a CoverItLive Broadcast.
