Never-Winner Land

Mark R. Kelly has added the first set of FAQs, tallies and pages of statistics to his superb Science Fiction Awards Database (which started life as the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards.)

SFADB now provides an overall tally of the top winners and nominees of “Major Career Awards” and “Major Awards” — the SF Hall of Fame, SFWA Grand Master, Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Andre Norton, British Fantasy, British SF, Campbell Memorial, Chesley, Arthur C. Clarke, International Fantasy, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Theodore Sturgeon, and James Tiptree, Jr. awards.

Who is the biggest winner of all time by this yardstick? Dave Langford, with 33 major awards – 29 Hugos, 1 British Fantasy Award and 3 British Science Fiction Awards.

I haven’t won enough Hugos (interrupted by shouts of “Like hell!!”) – I mean, to get above the SFADB event horizon as a winner.

But you will find me under “Total Losses.” What makes it more bearable is that I’m on the same rung (tied for 11th place) with David G. Hartwell, Kim Stanley Robinson, George R.R. Martin and Gene Wolfe.

And an amazing number of my friends are ranked in the tenderly named “Never Winner” category — folks who have accumulated lots of nominations without ever taking home the hardware, though their work has been held in high esteem to have been recognized so often.

Tied for second are Michael A. Burstein and Steven H Silver and further down the list are Guy H. Lillian III, Steve Stiles, Arthur D. Hlavaty, Evelyn C. Leeper, Taral Wayne, Andrew Hooper, Jerry Pournelle, Harry O. Morris, Jr., Bob Devney, Mark Plummer, Timothy Lane and Grant Canfield.

There’s a separate breakout for All Awards and Polls. Robert Silverberg occupies the top of this pyramid with 262 nominations. Appropriately for an sf writer, that practically puts him in another universe. He has 64 more than that the next person on the list, Ursula K. Le Guin.

Kelly has also created pages for UK Awards, Canadian Awards  (Lloyd Penney shows up twice), and Australian Awards (where it is revealed that Bruce Gillespie is the Langford of the Antipodes.)

Do visit the SF Awards Database — it’s a labor of love and one of the genre’s most valuable research sites.

2 thoughts on “Never-Winner Land

  1. The number of losses does not matter — if you have ever won! One Hugo win erases all the also-rans.

  2. David Langford’s success partially comes about from being in SFX. The man who published that magazine, Felix Dennis, died recently from throat cancer.
    His company also publishes many other magazines about comic books and movies, and FORTEAN TIMES.

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