Emma and Peter Newman at the Hugo Award Ceremony at Worldcon in Helsinki 2017

The Hugo Award for Best Fancast is one of the

Hugo Awards The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier ...

, and is awarded to the best non-professional audio or video periodical devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects. The Hugo Awards have been described as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction" and "the best known literary award for science fiction writing". To be eligible for the award, a fancast must have released four or more episodes by the end of the previous calendar year, at least one of which appeared in that year, and it must not qualify for the dramatic presentation category. It must also not provide or be published by an entity that provides a quarter or more of the income of any one person working on the fancast. The name of the award is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsfan and

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

. The Hugo Award for Best Fancast was first proposed as a category after the 2011 awards, and then appeared as a temporary category at the 2012 awards. Temporary awards are not required to be repeated in following years. The 2013 awards, however, did repeat the category, and afterwards it was ratified as a permanent category. During the 12 years the award has been active, 29 fancasts by 81 people have been nominated, and 7 of those fancasts have won. ''

SF Squeecast ''SF Squeecast'' is a double Hugo-Award-winning science fiction podcast from the United States. The podcast features a group of regular contributors, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente, ...

'', created by a team of five people, won the first two awards in 2012 and 2013, and declined to be nominated for 2014. '' SF Signal Podcast'', run by Patrick Hester, won the 2014 award, and ''Galactic Suburbia Podcast'', run by Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Andrew Finch, won the 2015 award. No award was given in 2016, and ''Tea and Jeopardy'', by Emma Newman and Peter Newman, won in 2017 on its third nomination. ''Ditch Diggers'', by

Mur Lafferty Mur Lafferty (born July 25, 1973) is an American podcaster and writer based in Durham, North Carolina. She was the editor and host of ''Escape Pod (podcast), Escape Pod'' from 2010, when she took over from Steve Eley, until 2012, when she was rep ...

and Matt Wallace, won the 2018 award in its second year of nominations, and ''Our Opinions Are Correct'', by

Annalee Newitz Annalee Newitz (born May 7, 1969) is an American journalist, editor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction, who has written for the periodicals '' Popular Science'' and ''Wired''. From 1999 to 2008 Newitz wrote a syndicated weekly column cal ...

and

Charlie Jane Anders Charlie Jane Anders is an American writer and commentator. She has written several novels, published magazines and websites, and hosted podcasts. In 2005, she received the Lambda Literary Award for work in the transgender category, and in 2009, t ...

, won the 2019, 2020, and 2022 awards. ''The Coode Street Podcast'', by

Jonathan Strahan Jonathan Strahan (born 1964, Belfast, Northern Ireland) is an editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His family moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1968, and he graduated from the University of Western Australia with a ...

and Gary K. Wolfe, won in 2021, and has received the most nominations at nine.

Selection

Hugo Award nominees and winners are chosen by supporting or attending members of the annual

World Science Fiction Convention Worldcon, or more formally the World Science Fiction Convention, the annual convention of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), is a science fiction convention. It has been held each year since 1939 (except for the years 1942 to 1945, during ...

, or Worldcon, and the awards presentation constitutes its central event. Supporting members are those who do not attend the convention itself, and pay a smaller membership fee as a result. The selection process is defined in the World Science Fiction Society Constitution as

instant-runoff voting Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a type of ranked preferential voting method. It uses a majority voting rule in single-winner elections where there are more than two candidates. It is commonly referred to as ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the Un ...

with six nominees, except in the case of a tie. The fancasts on the ballot are the six most-nominated by members that year, with no limit on the number of fancasts that can be nominated. Initial nominations are made by members in January through March, while voting on the ballot of six nominations is performed roughly in April through July, subject to change depending on when that year's Worldcon is held. Prior to 2017, the final ballot was five works; it was changed that year to six, with each initial nominator limited to five nominations. Worldcons are generally held near the start of September, 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 Fancast category in 2016.

Winners and nominees

In the following table, the years correspond to the date of the ceremony, rather than when the story was first published. Entries with a blue background have won the award; those with a white background are the other nominated works. * Winners + No award

References

External links

Official website
Fancast Podcasting awards {{featured list