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From: boyajian@akov68.DEC
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: re: Hugo Award nominations
Message-ID: <2126@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 11-May-85 07:28:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.2126
Posted: Sat May 11 07:28:49 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 14-May-85 06:44:54 EDT
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I missed the original posting, but...

> From:	ucla-cs!jeanne

>> Could someone enlighten me as
>> to the prerequisites a novel needs to be eligible for a Hugo? Copyright
>> date? Publication date? In which country?
>
> It's based on calendar year publication.  Books that
> get published in December and January (and never
> seem to come out when the copyright says) are a
> problem that I've never quite figured out.  My usual
> course of action is to use the Recommended List in
> Locus as a guide to what's eligible.

Partially right. Eligibility is based on the stated publication date
on the book or magazine. For this year's awards, short stories in
magazines are eligible only if the cover date is 1984, regardless
of when it comes out. Novels that are serialized in magazines are
only eligible for the year that the last issue containing the serial
is dated.
	For books, again, the stated publication date is what counts.
Remember, regardless of when a book is actually published, copyright
date only reflects when the book was copyrighted, not published. Of
course, books are usually issued a month before the stated publication
date, but that's something else again.

> I don't think country makes a difference, but since
> most people who vote are American, books published
> in the States obviously have an (overwhelming)
> advantage.

Nominees are eligible on their first publication *in English*. A worthy
story may have been published in, say, France, thirty years ago, but if
it was published in English for the first time in 1984, it would be
eligible for this year's awards. Books first published in England *can*
end up getting screwed if they aren't published in the US until the next
year, but this hasn't happened enough to make that much difference.
Besides, I believe there is a loophole in the eligibility rules that allows
an author of a book published only in England in a given year to withdraw
eligibilty for that novel until the year it appears in the US. I know
that this has applied to limited edition works. For example, Larry Niven's
RINGWORLD ENGINEERS came out in limited edition from Phantasia Press in
December 1979, but Niven withdrew it in favor of its trade publication in 1980.

--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA)

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