The winners of this year’s Hugo Awards were announced Sunday night at Chicon 7, this year’s World Science Fiction Convention. The ceremony was live-streamed (in a programming-sharing agreement) to DragonCon in Atlanta, as well as to an overflow room in the Chicago Hyatt. Unfortunately, the streaming was interrupted mid-ceremony when an automated program on the streaming website cancelled the channel for an assumed copyright infringement. Initial response is an apology from the site, but we’ll see what else is forthcoming. Glenn Hauman, who put together the video, describes the entire kerfluffle here, and also provides the “offending” video.
Toastmaster John Scalzi was an amusing and enthusiastic host for the ceremony, and presented most of the awards (in an effort to speed things along, though the ceremony still ran more than two and a half hours). The evening started with the Big Heart Award, presented by David A. Kyle to Juanita Coulson (the awards was accepted by Merav Hoffman). Next up, convention chairman Dave McCarty presented a Special Committee Award to Robert “Bob” Weinberg, which was accepted by Jane Frank. Following that was the In Memoriam presentation of those in the community who’ve died in the past year (it was too long a list). And the finale of the pre-Hugo Awards presentations was Dr. Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, presenting the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Schmidt had announced his retirement—after 34 years at the helm of the iconic sf magazine—earlier in the convention, and he was greeted with a standing ovation that quite surprised him. E. Lily Yu won the award in this her first year of eligibility.
Hugo Award base designer Deb Kosiba made a little speech, noting this is the third Hugo base she has designed, and then the awards ceremony truly began. The winners (in the order of presentation) are:
Best Fan Artist: Maurine Starkey
Best Fan Writer: Jim C. Hines. As part of his acceptance speech, Hines announced he is permanently removing himself from consideration in this category.
Best Fancast: SF Squeecast (Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente)
Best Fanzine: SF Signal, edited by John DeNardo
Best Semiprozine: Locus, edited by Liza Groen Trombi, Kirsten Gong-Wong, et al. Trombi noted this is Locus‘s first win since the death of founder Charles N. Brown.
Best Professional Artist: John Picacio
Best Editor—Long Form: Betsy Wollheim
Best Editor—Short Form: Sheila Williams
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): “The Doctor’s Wife” (Doctor Who), written by Neil Gaiman, directed by Richard Clark. It was during Gaiman’s acceptance speech that the live stream was yanked, leading to speculation that something in the clips introducing the nominees caused the suspected copyright infringement.
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Game of Thrones (Season 1). The award was accepted by author George R.R. Martin and actor Ron Donachie.
Best Graphic Story: Digger by Ursula Vernon
Best Related Work: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight
At this point, Scalzi ceded the stage to longtime editor Gardner Dozois, for the presentation of the Short Story Hugo (Scalzi was a nominee).
Best Short Story: “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March-April 2011)
Scalzi then returned to continue presenting awards.
Best Novelette: “Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com)
Best Novella: “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October-November 2011)
Best Novel: Among Others by Jo Walton
We detailed the nominees in this article.