The 2015 Hugos were rather more vexed than in previous years, due to one reason and another. We won’t get into the details here, but what might have been an interesting discussion about art, literature, publishing, and social trends became an relatively ugly brouhaha that both succeeded and failed to succeed in defining this year’s award nominating and awarding processes. The good news is, in the end, many deserving works, individuals, and organizations took home the coveted rocket, the recognition of excellence considered to be “the Oscars” of the Science Fiction and Fantasy community, awarded annually since 1955.
Here at Clockpunk Studios, we love designing responsive, insightful, and modern websites for individual writers and magazines. As we’re writers ourselves, we mean it when we say that the only thing better than hearing “I love it!” from a client when we show them their new site, is when we hear that they’ve accomplished something amazing, like publishing something new—or taking home a Hugo Award! Therefore, we were pleased to hear that one of our clients, Lightspeed Magazine, took home the Hugo for “Best Semiprozine.” Lightspeed is edited by John Joseph Adams, Stefan Rudnicki, Rich Horton, Wendy N. Wagner, and Christie Yant. Many congratulations to them on their deserved win in this always highly competitive category. (And of course, we’re also honored to also call the Lightspeed team our friends, so we were doubly excited for this win!)
Not only that, but another Hugo was taken home by a writer featured on Lightspeed Magazine. All the congratulations in the world to Thomas Olde Heuvelt (and Lia Belt, translator) for taking home the “Best Novelette” for “The Day The World Turned Upside Down.”
The full list of winners can be found on the Hugo Awards website. If you’re ever wondering about where to find excellent fiction of varying lengths, as well as fan-favorite awards for television shows, films, graphic novels, and associated works, the Hugo Awards is a great place to begin. While it’s always a good idea to keep current in one’s reading, sometimes going back to past years can be a fantastically rewarding experience.
Next year’s Hugo Awards will be awarded at WorldCon Kansas City—and the great news is, we’re locals! We came out for Sasquan this year, but we’ll be sure to be around next year, as well. We hope to see you there, and we hope to see a fantastic list of deserved nominees trembling with hope to see if their name is called when it comes time to announce, and then celebrating the winners afterwards. It’s an amazing event, not to be missed. Come on out and see the fun, and say hello! We’d love to meet you!