Introduction: About This Site
This Awards Index compiles results of awards given in the fields of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. These are awards primarily concerned with books, writers, and publishing (rather than film and television, in case you came to this site looking for something else — though a few awards compiled here do focus on the dramatic media), and the awards compiled here range from professional honors analogous to the Oscar or Emmy awards, to reader polls, academic prizes, and awards made by the community of "fans" who are devoted to the literary SF genre. (For an overview of included awards, see Table 1.)
Much of the data compiled here has been initially collected (though with verification wherever possible from other sources and authorities) from reports in Locus Magazine, which has been since 1968 "the newspaper of the science fiction field" and is itself the recipient of numerous awards listed in this Index. This Index includes complete results of Locus Magazine's annual readers' poll, presented annually as the Locus Awards.
The structural design of this Index (a set of periodically-updated, interlinked web pages, rather than a front-end to a database server a la the Internet Science Fiction Database) is largely inspired by the Locus Index to Science Fiction websites created by William G. Contento. Design of the database (implemented in Microsoft Access), compilation of data, and design and generation of the website, are entirely my effort. Numerous people have assisted in checking data, most notably (recently) Roger Silverstein, though none of them of course is responsible for errors and omissions that remain.
Plans
Though this Index now includes almost all of the originally-planned functionality — (it is already over 2100 individual web pages) — it remains a work in progress. Gaps in data will be researched; formatting and interlinking will be refined. In addition, future expansion of this website will include:
- Additional awards (especially European awards)
- More lists and answers to FAQs
- Plus, the 'Canon Index', essentially a statistical survey of publication and expert-list data to supplement awards data and fill in significant novels and stories over the entire history of SF, especially in the era predating awards
A CD Rom edition of this site is still planned, with some features reserved for that edition that will be omitted, or removed from the website. Suggestions for additional features are welcome.
Mark R. Kelly
Update: December 2002
This end-of-year update of the Awards Index incorporates available 2002 results for all of the awards compiled, including complete results of the 2002 Locus Poll. Summary lists of works won awards in 2002 are part of the Chronology section, with this page listing novels, and this one short fiction.
Fifteen additional awards are now compiled (bringing the total to over 80), mostly European awards, including the Eiffel, Geffen, Ignotus, Imaginaire, Italia, Lasswitz, Phantastik, UPC, and Hayakawa reader poll. Other awards newly compiled are the World Horror Grandmasters, the Lord Ruthven vampire book awards, the George Turner and Warner Aspect first novel contest results, several I-Con fan awards, and the discontinued but occasionally mentioned Deathrealm reader poll.
Note that, for now, only the "foreign" categories of the European and Japanese awards are compiled — meaning, in most cases, awards to books and stories first published in English. With only a couple exceptions, complete results of these awards are available on their websites, which are linked from their front page on this site.
The inclusion of these awards has affected some of the records presented on our FAQ pages. What novels have won the most awards? (Table 7.) Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama still leads, with 7, but Connie Willis's Doomsday Book now ties for second place (with Frank Herbert and William Gibson) with 6, by virtue of winning the Lasswitz, Ignotus, and Italia as well as the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus. Other novels have boosted rankings as well. Among short fiction, Terry Bisson's "Bears Discover Fire" is still on top, but shares the record now with Connie Willis's "Even the Queen" and Mike Resnick's "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge".
