The Hugo Awards: A Short History

The Hugo Awards are presented each August for notable achievements in science fiction and fantasy published in English over the previous year. Widely considered the most prestigious awards in the genre, they're bestowed annually at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), a global gathering of science fiction and fantasy fans, writers, artists and musicians.

First held in 1939, Worldcon is the world’s longest running science fiction convention. Thousands of sci-fi aficionados attend every year; the 2023 event, held in Chengdu, China, had a record 18,895 in-person attendees, and well over 20,000 when virtual attendees were added in. The event is open to all Worldcon members — some 50,000 people as of 2020.

The Hugo Award came to be in 1953, when Worldcon member Hal Lynch said to his friend Bob Madle, “I've got a great idea! Why don't we give awards for things like Best Novel and Best Magazine — sort of like the Oscars." Madle, a founding member of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, loved the idea, and suggested naming it after Hugo Gernsback, the publisher of Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted to science fiction. The committee in charge of Worldcon rejected the name, choosing to call the honor the Science Fiction Achievement Award instead. (The nickname “Hugo” obviously stuck, though, and in 1993 the Worldcon membership opted to officially change the award’s name to the Hugo Award.)

The The 1953 Hugo Awards were presented at the 11th Worldcon, set in Philadelphia. The Master of Ceremonies was author Isaac Asimov, and the rocket-shaped statuettes were handed out in seven categories:

• Best Novel: The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester
• Best Professional Magazine: Tied: Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy
• Best Cover Artist: Tied: Hannes Bok and Ed Emshwiller
• Best Interior Illustrator: Virgil Finlay
• Excellence in Fact Articles: Willy Ley
• Best New SF Author or Artist: Philip José Farmer
• #1 Fan Personality: Forrest J. Ackerman

The committee had initially decided that the award would be a “one-off” — something that wouldn’t be repeated at future Worldcons — and so there was no ceremony the following year. The membership complained enough, though, that the prize was reinstated the following year. It’s been presented every year since, with the exception of 1942-1945, during World War II.

The Hugo awards have always been chosen by science fiction fans. Initially the winners were elected via a “first-past-the-post” process, whereby anyone could nominate a work in a category and the book or person with the most votes would win. In 1968 this was changed to “instant runoff voting,” a type of selection process where people rank their choices. This was modified again in 2017 to a custom system known as E Pluribus Hugo (EPH), which uses a complicated algorithm to eliminate the least popular selections over several rounds. This proved necessary to combat two groups of individuals who tried to coopt the process — the Sick Puppies and the Rabid Puppies (more on this below).

Like many awards begun in the early 20th century, the Hugos suffered from bias, and almost all the awards initially went to white men. There has never been a year without this demographic represented, while there have been 25 without a single female nominee; racial statistics are harder to come by, but it’s almost certain that works by people of color have been even less present. Anne McCaffrey was the first woman to win for her novella, Weyr Search, in 1968, and in 1970 Samual Delaney was the first Black individual to win an award, for his short story “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones.” Ursula K. LeGuin became the first woman to be honored with the most prestigious prize — Best Novel — in 1970 for The Left Hand of Darkness.

This began to change in the early 2010s, when more women and more people of color were nominated for Hugos; in 2012 ten awards went to someone other than a white man. Unfortunately, this led to a misogynistic, white-power protest instigated by author Larry Correia, who felt his 2012 novel should have been nominated. According to writer Arinn Dembo in her blog The Dembo Jam, “He began complaining loudly and publicly that the Hugo Awards had become discriminatory against his demographic (Straight White Males) and insisted that all awards given to White women or People of Color were not based on merit or quality, but on ‘Political Correctness.'” The resulting coordinated campaign by those who agreed with him, dubbed the “Sick Puppies,” managed to impact the awards in 2014, and a second group, the “Rabid Puppies,” similarly affected the ballot in 2015. Every one of their slated candidates made it to the finals, but none of them won. The modification of the Hugo voting method to EPH put a stop to the shenanigans. 

Award categories change frequently. Currently there are 17:

• Best Novel (40,000+ words)
• Best Novella (17,500 to 40,000 words)
• Best Novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words)
• Best Short Story (<7,500 words)
• Best Series — a work presented in at least three installments, totaling at least 240,000 words
• Best Graphic Story or Comic
• Best Related Work — The type of works eligible “include, but are not limited to, collections of art, works of literary criticism, books about the making of a film or TV series, biographies and so on, provided that they do not qualify for another category.”
• Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) (90+ minutes)
• Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (<90 minutes)
• Best Editor (Long Form) –—Those eligible have edited at least four novel-length SFF books over the past year, excluding anthologies
• Best Editor (Short Form) — Those eligible have edited at least four anthologies or collections over the past year
• Best Professional Artist
• Best Semiprozine — publications that do pay their staff, but not a living wage
• Best Fanzine
• Best Fancast
• Best Fan Writer
• Best Fan Artist

Since its inception, those voting for the Hugos have been able to select “No Award” when they feel there are no qualified candidates or if they think a category should be removed. Consequently, there are often times when “No Award” has “won” the category. In 1996, Worldcon began awarding the Retro-Hugo Awards, considering books published 25, 50 and 75 years prior for categories that didn’t have a winner.

The Worldcon committee also has the right to add one temporary category to cover special circumstances, and can additionally opt to present special awards. Al von Ruff, for example, was presented with a special award for his work on The Internet Speculative Fiction Database in 2022.

Worldcon members bestow two other awards during the annual Hugo Awards presentation: The Astounding Award (the John W. Campbell Award until 2019), started in 1973, given for the best new author; and the Lodestar Award, first awarded in 2018, for the best in young adult book. Neither of these is considered a Hugo Award, although they’re presented during the annual ceremony.

For a full list of Hugo winners by year, click here.