Hugo Award for Best Fanzine

The Hugo Award for Best Fanzine is given each year for non professionally edited magazines, or "fanzines", related to science fiction or fantasy which has published four or more issues with at least one issue appearing in the previous calendar year.^[1] Awards were also once given out for professional magazines in the professional magazine category, and since 1984 have been awarded for semi-professional magazines in the semiprozine category; several magazines that were nominated for or won the fanzine category have gone on to be nominated for or win the semiprozine category since it was established. The Hugo Awards have been described as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction" and "the best known literary award for science fiction writing".^[2][3]

The award was first presented in 1955, and has been given annually since except for in 1958. A "fanzine" is defined for the award as a magazine that does not meet the Hugo award's criteria for a professional or semi-professional magazine. Specifically, it must meet less than two of the five Hugo criteria for consideration as a semiprozine: that the magazine had an average press run of at least one thousand copies per issue, paid its contributors and/or staff in other than copies of the publication, provided at least half the income of any one person, had at least fifteen percent of its total space occupied by advertising, and announced itself to be a semiprozine.^[4] This is the oldest long-running Hugo award for fan activity; in 1967 Hugo Awards were added specifically for fan writing and fan art. In addition to the regular Hugo awards, beginning in 1996 Retrospective Hugo Awards, or "Retro Hugos", have been available to be awarded for years 50, 75, or 100 years prior in which no awards were given.^[5] To date, Retro Hugo awards have been awarded for 1939, 1941, 1943—1946, 1951, and 1954, and the fanzine category has been included each year.^[6]

During the 77 nomination years, including Retro Hugo years, 141 magazines run by hundreds of editors have been nominated. Of these, 44 magazines have won, including ties. File 770 and Locus have each won 8 times, the most wins of any magazine. File 770 also holds the record for most nominations at 31; Locus has been nominated 13 times. Mimosa has won 6 of 14 nominations, Ansible has won 5 out of 11, and Science Fiction Review has won 4 of 12; they are the only other magazines to win more than twice. Challenger has the most nominations without winning at 12; the next highest is FOSFAX with 7. As editor of Locus Charles N. Brown has won 8 of 13 nominations, though he shared 8 of those awards with Dena Brown. Richard E. Geis has won 6 of 15 nominations for his work on Science Fiction Review, Psychotic, and The Alien Critic; Mike Glyer has won 8 of 31 for editing File 770; David Langford has won 5 of 12 for work on Ansible and Twil-Ddu; and Richard Lynch and Nicki Lynch have both won 6 of 14 nominations for Mimosa; Christopher J Garcia has been nominated 18 times for both The Drink Tank and Journey Planet, winning once for each, with James Bacon appearing on 15 of those nominations. Guy H. Lillian III has the most nominations without winning at 12 for Challenger.