Hugo Award for Best Short Story
| Hugo Award for Best Short Story | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | The best science fiction or fantasy story of less than 7,500 words published in the prior calendar year (different criteria before 1967) |
| Presented by | World Science Fiction Society |
| First awarded | 1955 |
| Most recent winner | Naomi Kritzer ("Cat Pictures Please") |
| Official website | thehugoawards.org |
The Hugo Award for Best Short Story is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published in English or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The short story award is available for works of fiction of fewer than 7,500 words; awards are also given out for pieces of longer lengths in the novelette, novella, and novel categories.
The Hugo Award for Best Short Story has been awarded annually since 1955, except in 1957. The award was titled "Best Short Fiction" rather than "Best Short Story" in 1960–1966. During this time no Novelette category was awarded and the Novella category had not yet been established; the award was defined only as a work "of less than novel length" that was not published as a stand-alone book. In addition to the regular Hugo awards, beginning in 1996 Retrospective Hugo Awards, or "Retro Hugos", have been available to be awarded for 50, 75, or 100 years prior. Retro Hugos may only be awarded for years in which a World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon, was hosted, but no awards were originally given. To date, Retro Hugo awards have been given for short stories for 1939, 1941, 1946, 1951, and 1954.
Hugo Award nominees and winners are chosen by supporting or attending members of the annual 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 short stories on the ballot are the five most-nominated by members that year, with no limit on the number of stories that can be nominated. The 1955 through 1958 awards did not include any recognition of runner-up stories, but since 1959 all five candidates have been 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 Labor Day, and are held in a different city around the world each year. Members are permitted to vote "no award", if they feel that none of the nominees is deserving of the award that year, and in the case that "no award" takes the majority the Hugo is not given in that category. This happened in the Best Short Story category in 2015.
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