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Hugo Award nominees and winners are chosen by members of the annual with five nominees (except in the case of a tie). The Hugo Award trophy was co-designed by longtime SF fan and booster Benedict Jablonski who based it on a rocket-shaped hood ornament from an Oldsmobile 88 . The rocket design has become standardised in recent years and the rockets are currently produced by UK fan Peter Weston . The design for the base on which the rocket is mounted is the responsibility of the Worldcon committee and therefore changes each year. The base design has been selected by various means including committee selection, direct commission and by open competition (currently the most common method). The 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony was held at the 64th World Science Fiction Convention on Saturday, August 26 in Anaheim, California . The 2007 Awards were presented at the 65th World Science Fiction Convention in Yokohama , Japan on 1 September . HISTORY While "bests" had been voted at all Worldcon s since the inaugural event in 1939, no awards were presented until the 11th Worldcon (''Philcon II'', Philadelphia 1953). The awards were the idea of Hal Lynch, hand-machined by Jack McKnight and consisted of a finned steel rocket on a circular wooden base. They were not initially conceived to be a permanent Worldcon feature. However, at the 13th Worldcon ( Cleveland, Ohio 1955) it was decided to make the physical awards permanent. A new design capable of Mass Production was made by Benedict Jablonski . It was largely similar to the first design but on a square base, and became the standard design for most of the following conventions. Initially the award was called the Annual Science Fiction Achievement Award, with "Hugo Award" being an unofficial, but better known name. Since 1993, the nickname has been adopted as the official name of the award. There have been several anthologies collecting Hugo-winning short fiction. The well-known series '' The Hugo Winners '' edited and introduced by Isaac Asimov was started in 1962, collecting all winners up to the previous year, and concluded with the 1982 Hugos in Volume 5. '' The New Hugo Winners '', edited originally by Asimov and later Gregory Benford has four volumes collecting stories from the 1983 to the 1994 Hugos. Recent controversy While the WSFS Constitution states that the award is for works of science fiction and fantasy, in practice it has, until the 1990s, almost always gone to science fiction works. This precedent contributed to complaints when the 2001 Hugo for best novel was given to '' Online'', retrieved April 24, 2007 Roughly twenty formal fantasies had previously been nominated for best novel and at least a half dozen genre fantasies had taken awards for shorter length works, as well as several genre-bending works by Harlan Ellison . There has been no similar controversy about the three fantasy novels that have won since – '' American Gods '' by Neil Gaiman in 2002, '' Paladin Of Souls '' by Lois McMaster Bujold in 2004, and '' Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell '' in 2005 by Susanna Clarke , whose authors are all part of the genre community (Clarke received applause at the ceremony when she described her refusal of the publisher's recommendation to distance the novel from "fantasy" description for commercial reasons and Bujold had already won 4 Hugos for her SF). There was also some controversy in 2004 when the Hugo Award For Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form was won by a joke MTV Movie Awards show acceptance speech featuring Gollum from '' The Lord Of The Rings '' over acclaimed episodes of '' Firefly '', '' Buffy The Vampire Slayer '' and '' Smallville ''. HUGO AWARD CATEGORIES Until about 1960 , most Hugo award categories changed from year to year. The current standard award categories (specified in World Science Fiction Society Constitution) have been:
The rules also allow for an additional category at the discretion of the Worldcon organising committee, the most recent ones being the Hugo Award for Best Web Site in 2002 and 2005. An earlier example was the Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series awarded in 1966 to the Foundation Trilogy . RETRO HUGOS In mid-1990s Retrospective Hugo Awards (normally abbreviated '''Retro Hugos''') were added: Worldcons held 50, 75, or 100 years after a Worldcon where no Hugos had been awarded (i.e. 1939–41, 1946–52 and 1954) can also retroactively select Hugos for that year, by the same process as the regular Hugos. This was a subject of much controversy, with critics of the proposal arguing that hindsight necessarily distorts perception, and there is no point in giving awards decades post factum anyway The Locus Index to SF Awards: About the Retro-Hugos , retrieved April 24 , 2007 .. There have been only three Retro-Hugos given at 1996, 2001 and 2004 Worldcons (always for 50 years back), while the five eligible in 1997–2000 and 2002 did not organize them; the next opportunity will be in 2014 for the year 1939, starting the 75-year cycle. RELATED AWARDS There are in the UK and the Canadian Aurora Award with separate categories for English and French fiction. Probably the best-known of non-English speaking countries is the Japanese Seiun Award , whose foreign fiction categories were often presented at Worldcon. The World Science Fiction Convention also awards the John W. Campbell Award For Best New Writer , sponsored by the publishers of '' Analog Science Fiction And Fact '' which John W. Campbell edited. Although presented at the same ceremony and voted by the same process, it is not formally a Hugo. (Nor should it be confused with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award For Best Science Fiction Novel , a jury-selected prize not associated with the Worldcon at all.) During 1974–1980 the World Science Fiction Convention also awarded the Gandalf Award for Grand Master of Fantasy and (in 1978–79) Book-Length Fantasy. See also
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