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Monday, September 5, 1977

1977 Hugo Award Finalists

Location: SunCon in Miami Beach, Florida.

Comments: The most notable fact about Kate Wilhelm's Best Hugo award for her novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is not just that she won, but that she beat out old stalwarts like Frank Herbert, Frederik Pohl, and Robert Silverberg while doing so. In the eight years since Anne McCaffrey became the first woman to win a Hugo Award, the boys club of science fiction has made some progress including women. It isn't huge progress, but it is a decent start.

Once again, while the writing awards were on the whole unsurprising, and each award went to deserving winners, the Best Dramatic Presentation Award provided this year with its, for lack of a better word, drama. For the fourth time the award went to "No Winner", which seems like something of a shock after the modest quality of the winners over the previous couple of years. Surely if movies like A Boy and His Dog and Sleeper could garner a victory in this category, either Logan's Run, The Man Who Fell to Earth, or even Carrie was worthy of a Hugo statute. This was also the last year before the sea change in science fiction film making that took place when Star Wars was released, and it would have been nice to have one final "classic" style science fiction film win a Hugo.

Best Novel

Winner:
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm

Other Finalists:
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
Mindbridge by Joe Haldeman
Shadrach in the Furnace by Robert Silverberg

Best Novella

Winner:
(tie) By Any Other Name by Spider Robinson
(tie) Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr.

Other Finalists:
Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Richard Cowper
The Samurai and the Willows by Michael Bishop

Best Novelette

Winner:
The Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov

Other Finalists:
The Diary of the Rose by Ursula K. Le Guin
Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance by John Varley
The Phantom of Kansas by John Varley

Best Short Story

Winner:
Tricentennial by Joe Haldeman

Other Finalists:
A Crowd of Shadows by Charles L. Grant
Custom Fitting by James White
I See You by Damon Knight (reviewed in TV: 2000)

Best Dramatic Presentation

Winner:
No Winner

Other Finalists:
Carrie
Futureworld
Logan's Run
The Man Who Fell to Earth

Best Professional Editor

Winner:
Ben Bova

Other Finalists:
Jim Baen
Terry Carr
Edward L. Ferman
Ted White

Best Professional Artist

Winner:
Rick Sternbach

Other Finalists:
George Barr
Vincent Di Fate
Steve Fabian

Best Fanzine

Winner:
Science Fiction Review edited by Richard E. Geis

Other Finalists:
Locus edited by Charles Brown and Dena Brown
Mythologies edited by Don D'Ammassa
Outworlds edited by Bill Bowers
The Spanish Inquisition edited by Suzanne Tompkins and Jerry Kaufman

Best Fan Writer

Winner:
(tie) Richard E. Geis
(tie) Susan Wood

Other Finalists:
Don D'Ammassa
Mike Glicksohn
Don C. Thompson

Best Fan Artist

Winner:

Other Finalists:
Grant Canfield
Tim Kirk
Bill Rotsler
Jim Shull

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

Winner:
C.J. Cherryh

Other Finalists:
Jack L. Chalker
M.A. Foster
Carter Scholz

What Are the Hugo Awards?

Go to previous year's nominees: 1976
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1978

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