The 1945 Retrospective Hugo Award winners were announced in an online ceremony produced by CoNZealand, the 78th World Science Fiction Convention, starting at 11:00, Thursday 30 Jul 2020 New Zealand Standard Time. The ceremony was live-streamed via The Fantasy Network.
CoNZealand received and counted 521 final ballots. The winners and other finalists are listed below. There was a tie in one category: Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.
CoNZealand received and counted 120 valid nominating ballots with a total of 1,677 nominations from the members of Dublin 2019: an Irish Worldcon (Worldcon 77) and CoNZealand (Worldcon 78). Members nominated up to five works/people in each category, and the top six works/people in each category were shortlisted as finalists.
The finalists for the 1945 Retrospective Hugo Awards were announced by CoNZealand, the 78th World Science Fiction Convention, on the convention’s YouTube Channel on April 8, 2020 (NZST).
Per WSFS rules, categories in which there were insufficient nominations to justify the category were dropped.
The Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer are not Hugo Awards, and therefore no retrospective versions of them were included on the nominating ballot.
Please direct all questions about the administration of the 2020 Hugo Awards/Lodestar Award/Astounding Award and 1945 Retro-Hugo Awards to the 2020/1945 Hugo Award Administrators, not to the Hugo Awards web site. The Hugo Awards web site does not administer the Hugo Awards. All questions about the administration of the current Awards should go to the administrators.
Best Novel
- “Shadow Over Mars” (The Nemesis from Terra) by Leigh Brackett (Startling Stories, Fall 1944)
Best Novella
- “Killdozer!” by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding Science Fiction , November 1944)
Best Novelette
- “City” by Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction , May 1944)
Best Short Story
- “I, Rocket” by Ray Bradbury (Amazing Stories , May 1944)
Best Series
- The Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, and others
Best Related Work
- “The Science-Fiction Field” by Leigh Brackett (Writer’s Digest, July 1944)
Best Graphic Story or Comic
- Superman: “The Mysterious Mr. Mxyztplk” by Jerry Siegel, Ira Yarbrough and Joe Shuster (Detective Comics, Inc.)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
[Tie]
- The Canterville Ghost, screenplay by Edwin Harvey Blum from a story by Oscar Wilde, directed by Jules Dassin (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM))
- The Curse of the Cat People, written by DeWitt Bodeen, directed by Gunther V. Fritsch and Robert Wise (RKO Radio Pictures)
Best Editor, Short Form
- John W. Campbell, Jr.
Best Professional Artist
- Margaret Brundage
Best Fanzine
- Voice of the Imagi-Nation , edited by Forrest J. Ackerman and Myrtle R. Douglas
Best Fan Writer
- Fritz Leiber
Congratulations to all nominees!
LATER CORRECTION: Following a message from the CoNZealand Hugo Awards administrators, the credit for Superman: “The Mysterious Mr. Mxyztplk” has been updated, in keeping with the listing for this issue in Superman Archives Vol. 8, published by DC Comics.
Like many many here I am familiar with lots of the awarded laureates in some of the non-novel catagories. And I congratulate the posthumous awards to Sturgeon, Simak, Bradbury, Lovecraft (although he was a fu—– racist), Campbell (not immune from racism), Siegel, Schuster, Forry Ackerman, those responsible for the movies, and any and all of the nominees who I might know or regret not knowing from the mists of time before my birth.
I read two Leigh Brackett novels due to my knowledge of her uniqueness. Never read Shadow—. Looked at the other nominees. Terra incognita. So I am sure that the best pick was made.
I appreciate those who do the work of keeping our genre and love, alive. Thank you.
I’m glad to see “Killdozer!” win. It’s almost a perfectly anti-Lovecraftian story of cosmic horror . . .