The World Science Fiction Society will add a Best Graphic Story category to the prestigious Hugo Awards, which honor science fiction and fantasy.
The new category will need to be ratified at next year’s Worldcon before it can take effect. However, organizers of the 2009 convention in Montréal have included Best Graphic Story as a temporary category. According to ICv2.com, “Any science fiction or fantasy story told in graphic form appearing for the first time in the previous calendar year” will be eligible.
Although this will be the first time the Hugos have had a category specifically for comics, in 1988 it honored Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen in the Other Forms category. And in 2000, Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano’s illustrated novella The Sandman: The Dream Hunters was nominated in the Best Related Book category for a work that “is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text.”
August 24th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
That is awesome news. Since most superhero novelization(either based on movies or original novels) are considered Science Fiction.
Though what do they comsider Science Fiction? The Sandman:Dream Hunters is more Fantasy than Science Fiction. And I would consider that most graphic novels fall under more of the Fantasy catagory instead of Science Fiction.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Stephen:
1. It doesn’t matter. The Hugo Awards are for works of science fiction and fantasy. It says so right in the rules and on the Official FAQ.
2. Aside from technical matters such as when or where a book was published, the administrators of the Hugo Award almost never get involved in trying to determine whether a work is “sufficiently SF/F” to qualify for the awards. Because all of the thousands of members of the World Science Fiction Convention (anyone can join, and you don’t have to attend the convention to buy the less-expensive “supporting membership”) are eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards, the rules take the attitude of “vox populi, vox dei,” meaning that if the members think a work is SF/F by the act of nominating it, then it must be SF/F.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
As I wrote in more detail here, this new category is not a done deal, and anyone who cares about it, either in favor of it or opposed to it, should join next year’s World Science Fiction Convention, Anticipation, either to nominate works for the (in effect) trial category they’ve established, or to plan to vote No Award on the final ballot to register displeasure with the category. In addition, anyone who cares about this subject and who can attend Anticipation should be planning to attend the World Science Fiction Society Business Meeting (every member of Worldcon is a member of WSFS; in fact, it’s the only way you can join WSFS) to debate and vote upon the ratification of this award as a new permanent category.