Hugo Award for Best Fancast | |
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Awarded for | The best non-professional science fiction or fantasy video or audio series published in the prior calendar year |
Presented by | World Science Fiction Society |
First awarded | 2012 |
Most recent winner | Octothorpe (John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty) |
Website | thehugoawards.org |
The Hugo Award for Best Fancast is one of the Hugo Awards, and is awarded to the best non-professional audio or video periodical devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects. The Hugo Awards have been described as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction" and "the best known literary award for science fiction writing".[1][2]
To be eligible for the award, a fancast must have released four or more episodes by the end of the previous calendar year, at least one of which appeared in that year, and it must not qualify for the dramatic presentation category. It must also not provide or be published by an entity that provides a quarter or more of the income of any one person working on the fancast.[3] The name of the award is a portmanteau of fan and podcast. The Hugo Award for Best Fancast was first proposed as a category after the 2011 awards, and then appeared as a temporary category at the 2012 awards. Temporary awards are not required to be repeated in following years. The 2013 awards, however, did repeat the category, and afterwards it was ratified as a permanent category.
During the 13 years the award has been active, 31 fancasts by 86 people have been nominated, and 9 of those fancasts have won. SF Squeecast, created by a team of five people, won the first two awards in 2012 and 2013, and Our Opinions Are Correct, by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, won three times. They are the only fancasts to win multiple times. The Coode Street Podcast, by Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe, won in 2021, and has received the most nominations at ten.