The Hugo Awards are one of science fiction’s oldest and most revered prizes - if you win one of these, you can reckon to have earned high status among sci-fi fans and your peers alike. The rocket-shaped award (top picture) is named after Hugo Gernsback, one of the pioneers of the genre, the man responsible for the pioneering Amazing Stories magazine.
Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (middle picture) took the 2009 Best Novel prize at yesterday’s ceremony in Montreal, Canada. The children’s book is not the first time that English novelist Gaiman has taken honours - in 2002 his American Gods also won a Hugo. Illustrated by Dave McKean, The Graveyard Book describes a child targeted for death by a league of assassins; he escapes into an old graveyard, where he is cared for by the spirits that dwell there.
There were many other prizes at the ceremony, but Pixar’s Wall-E (bottom) stands out for bringing adult values to a nominally children’s cgi animated movie. It picked up the Hugo for Best Long-Form Dramatic Presentation, deservedly so for its observations on artificial intelligence, long-term solitude, and crass overconsumption. And besides, Wall-E is just so cute!
The Starcruzer crew does have a query for the Hugo team though: Why is there no award for videogames? The gaming industry outsells much of the Hollywood and book publishing worlds these days, and many of its top products are purest science-fiction - we reckon that Halo at least deserves at least some kind of honorable mention.
Visit the Hugo Awards here.
You can buy The Graveyard Book here.
All sorts of Wall-E robots are available here.
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