Hugo Award for Graphic Novels
This comes from ICv2:
The World Science Fiction Society, which sponsors the Hugo Awards (and the annual World Science Fiction Convention), has added a category for Best Graphic Story to the awards. “Any science fiction or fantasy story told in graphic form appearing for the first time in the previous calendar year” will be eligible.
SWEET! It's about time.
posted by Rick Klaw at
5:40 PM
2 Comments:
It's important to bear in mind the rest of the announcement and its implications.
1. The Best Graphic Story Hugo Award being presented next year by Anticipation, the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal, is using their authority to add a special one-time-only category.
2. The proposal to add Best Graphic Story as a permanent Hugo Award category received first passage at this year's Worldcon in Denver, but will not be made permanent unless ratified by next year's Worldcon in Montreal. It seems very likely that vote next year will be heavily influenced by what gets nominated next year and, just as importantly, how many people cast nominating ballots. (For more information on how the Hugo Awards process works, see the official Hugo Awards Web Site.
3. Every member of this past Worldcon in Denver, and every person who joins next year's Worldcon in Montreal by January 31, 2009, will be eligible to nominate in the 2009 Hugo Awards. Thousands of people are thus eligible to nominate, but typically only a few hundred actually bother to cast their ballots. Therefore, anyone wanting to make an impact on the election should buy at least a supporting membership (doesn't attend, gets publications, may vote) in next year's Worldcon.
4. Every attending member of next year's Worldcon in Montreal is eligible to come to the WSFS Business Meeting to vote on the ratification of Best Graphic Story as a permanent category. You don't lobby a Board of Directors. You don't elect representatives to a Chamber to Delegates. It's a Town Meeting of Fandom, so anyone who feels that this category is a good (or bad) idea has to show up in person and vote.
I know I'm belaboring this -- you may well already know all of it already -- but my experience over the last twenty-plus years is that many people expect Someone Else to do the work for them, when in fact in the case of the Hugo Awards everyone has to represent themselves. There's no secret and mysterious "them" to make the decisions -- there's only "us."
Regardless if this becomes a permanent Hugo Award or not, the important thing is the award being seriously considered. This represents the changing view of graphic novels as a legitimate medium within science fiction fandom. A change I feared would never happen.
The evolution of this viewpoint was a big part of my current Nexus Graphica column.
But thank you, Kevin, for the clarification.
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