Comments: Presented at the 11th annual Worldcon in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the 1953 Hugo Awards were the first time this award was handed out. The awards were intended as a "one-off" at the time, with no real intent to repeat them, although there seems to have been some vague hope that they would be continued.
The first Hugo Awards seem to have been a fairly informal affair. Of the categories established in this year, only two - Best Novel and Best Professional Magazine - were carried forward in subsequent Worldcons. All of the rest of the categories awarded in 1953 were awarded just this one time. Further, with the exception of the award for Best Novel, none of the other awards handed out were specifically for fiction writing, which is a marked difference from the territory that has been staked out for the award in the years since then.
Until 1959 none of the names non-winning finalists for any of the award categories were recorded. As far as I can tell, no one has ever tried to reconstruct the lists of nominees from the years prior to 1959, and even if that was theoretically possible at one time, so many of the prominent members of that era's science fiction circle of authors and fans has passed away that it is almost certainly impossible to do so now. As a result, there is no way to tell who the other finalists were, or even if there were any at all.
Best Novel
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
Other Finalists:
None
Best Professional Magazine
(tie) Astounding by John W. Campbell, Jr.
(tie) Galaxy by H.L. Gold
Other Finalists:
None
Best Interior Illustrator
Virgil Finlay
Other Finalists:
None
Best Cover Artist
(tie) Hannes Bok
(tie) Ed Emshwiller
Other Finalists:
None
Best New Author or Artist
Philip José Farmer
Other Finalists:
None
Award for Excellence in Fact Articles
Willy Ley
Other Finalists:
None
#1 Fan Personality
Forest J. Ackerman
Other Finalists:
None
Go to previous year's finalists: 1951 (awarded in 2001)
Go to subsequent year's finalists: 1954 (awarded in 2004)
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