Though the livestream was sadly marred by a ridiculous claim of "copyright violation" that led to it being shut down—made all the more ridiculous by the fact that the Dramatic Presentation clips shown were all used with permission of the copyright holders, and were surely brief enough to merit a Fair Use argument—the Hugo Awards rolled on. Here’s the results for the fans:
- John Picacio finally (finally) win his first Hugo for Best Professional Artist in a year when his 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar was part of his body of work.
- Anne Groell, editor of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, didn’t win—but another first-time nominee, Betsy Wollheim, did… and that after being an editor for many long years.
- Game of Thrones‘s first season won the Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form! George R.R. Martin and actor Ron Donachie (the late, lamented Ser Rodrik) accepted the award on behalf of HBO, David Benioff, and Dan Weiss. Because of the rules of the Hugos, the whole season was eligible as a single body of work in large part due to the fact that it told a continuous story across its multiple episodes.
- And the award for Best Novel (or the Big One, as they like to call it), in which A Dance with Dragons was nominated, went to Jo Walton’s Among Others, whose first words when accepting the award were: “George, I’m so sorry!” It’s a well deserved win for Walton (check out Tooth and Claw, if you’re interested in a novel of manners featuring dragons—and if you love good, thoughtful SF/F, you are interested). The fifth novel in a continuing series is a tough one to win an award on, if history is any example, but one can always consider the end of series factor and the idea that series are best awarded prizes at their conclusion (just look at The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at the Oscars).
Congratulations to all the nominees and winners in the awards! See here for the full list of winners. If the recording of the awards ceremony goes up at some point, we’ll be sure to link it.