Hugo Award For Best Semiprozine

Hugo Award For Best Semiprozine

The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially known as the Science Fiction Achievement Award. The award has been described as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction" and "the best known literary award for science fiction writing". The Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine was given each year for semi-professionally-edited magazines related to science fiction or fantasy, published in English and which had published four or more issues, with at least one issue appearing in the previous calendar year. Awards were once also given out for professional magazines in the professional magazine category, and are still awarded for fan magazines in the fanzine category.

The award was first presented in 1984, and has been given annually since. A "semiprozine" is defined for the award as a magazine that meets at least two of five criteria given. These criteria are: that the magazine had an average press run of at least one thousand copies per issue, that it paid its contributors and/or staff in other than copies of the publication, that it provided at least half the income of any one person, that it had at least fifteen percent of its total space occupied by advertising, and that announced itself to be a semiprozine. In addition to the regular Hugo awards, beginning in 1996 Retrospective Hugo Awards, or "Retro Hugos", have been available to be awarded for years 50, 75, or 100 years prior in which no awards were given. To date, Retro Hugo awards have been awarded for 1946, 1951, and 1954, but the category was only available for nominations for 1951 and 1954 and failed to receive enough to form a ballot either year.

Hugo Award nominees and winners are chosen by supporting or attending members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), and the presentation evening constitutes its central event. The selection process is defined in the World Science Fiction Society Constitution as instant-runoff voting with five nominees, except in the case of a tie. These five works on the ballot are the most-nominated by members that year, with no limit on the number of works that can be nominated. The 1953 through 1956 and 1958 awards did not include any recognition of runner-up magazines, but since 1959 all five candidates were recorded. Initial nominations are made by members in January through March, while voting on the ballot of five nominations is performed roughly in April through July, subject to change depending on when that year's Worldcon is held. Worldcons are generally held near the start of September, and are held in a different city around the world each year. At the 2008 business meeting, an amendment to the World Science Fiction Society's Constitution was passed which would remove this category. The vote to ratify this amendment was held the following year; the ratification failed and the category remained. Instead, a committee was formed to recommend improvements to the category and related categories.

During the 29 nomination years, 24 magazines run by 51 editors have been nominated. Of these, only six magazines run by twelve editors have won. Locus has won 22 times and has been nominated every year; Science Fiction Chronicle and Clarkesworld Magazine are the only other magazines to win more than once with 2 awards out of 18 and 2 out of 3 nominations, respectively, while Ansible has won 1 out of 7 nominations, Interzone has won 1 out of 27, and Weird Tales has won 1 out of its 3 nominations. As editor of Locus Charles N. Brown has won 21 of 27 nominations, though he shared 5 of those awards with Kirsten Gong-Wong, 3 with Liza Groen Trombi and 2 with Jennifer A. Hall. The sole editor for Chronicle's awards was Andrew I. Porter, while David Pringle earned Interzone's, Ann VanderMeer and Stephen H. Segal were the editors for Weird Tales's victory, David Langford was the editor when Ansible was awarded, and Clarkesworld Magazine's winning year was under Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, and Cheryl Morgan. The New York Review of Science Fiction has received the most number of nominations without ever winning at 22, under the helm of David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, Kevin J. Maroney and 8 other editors. The next highest number of nominations without winning is 7 for Speculations under Kent Brewster, Denise Lee, and Susan Fry.