Best Fan Writer Hugo Final Exam

Mr. Rico, now that you’ve finished the crash course in History and Moral Philosophy of the Best Fan Writer Hugo here’s your final quiz:

How many times has the Best Fan Writer Hugo been won by a person who had been nominated previously for a non-fan Hugo?

Hint #1: Count Best Fan Writer Hugos won in any year after first being nominated in a non-fan category. For example, David Langford received a 1993 Best Nonfiction Book nomination for Let’s Hear It For the Deaf Man. Don’t count the Best Fan Writer Hugo he received that same year in your answer.

Hint #2: The winners since the creation of the category in 1967 are: Terry Carr, Richard E. Geis, Mike Glyer, Dave Langford, Cheryl Morgan, Alexei Panshin, Frederik Pohl, John Scalzi, Bob Shaw, Wilson Tucker, Harry Warner Jr., Ted White and Susan Wood.

See the answer after the jump.

The answer is 21 times. And it’s not all Dave Langford — 7 different winners can claim this distinction. (No wonder this is a controversial category.) Here’s the detail:

2010       Fred Pohl             The magazines he edited in the 1960s, Galaxy and If, received many Best Professional Magazine Hugo nominations and If  won three times (1966-1968). His own fiction frequently made the ballot in the 1970s and 1980s. He had two Hugo-winning short stories, “The Meeting” (co-authored by C.M. Kornbluth; 1973) and “Fermi and Frost” (1986), and won a Hugo for his novel Gateway (1978).

2008       John Scalzi           He received a 2006 nomination in Best Novel for Old Man’s War. He followed his Best Fan Writer Hugo by winning the 2009 Best Related Book Hugo with Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008.

1994-2007            Dave Langford, of course, had many fan Hugo nominations before and after he earned a Best Nonfiction Book in 1993 with Let’s Hear It For the Deaf Man. Langford has also won a pro fiction Hugo, Best Short Story of 2001, “Different Kinds of Darkness” and Ansible has won a Best Semiprozine Hugo.  

2006       Cheryl Morgan  She received a Best Semiprozine Hugo in 2006 for Emerald City. You may wink and say that, like Ansible, this was the result of voluntarily moving her fanzine into the category (as permitted in the rules). But if I wrote a trivia question about the Best Semiprozine category and ignored Emerald City and Ansible fans would say the answer was wrong: so let’s be consistent.

1981       Susan Wood       The 1980 winner of the Best Nonfiction Book Hugo, The Language of the Night by Ursula K. Le Guin, was edited by Susan Wood. Wood received abundant recognition as a fan writer in earlier years – her posthumous appearance on the ballot in 1981 was her eighth Best Fan Writer nomination and third win. Just the year before, she was recognized along Le Guin with a nomination for this professional work.

1979, 1980           Bob Shaw            Shaw’s fan writer Hugos came long after he received a 1967 Best Short Story nomination for the classic “Light of Other Days.”

1973       Terry Carr            Carr received many fan Hugo nominations over the years, shared a Best Amateur Magazine Hugo for Fanac with Ron Ellik in 1959, and won the Best Fan Writer Hugo in 1973 a few years after getting a 1969 Best Short Story nomination for “The Dance of the Changer and Three.”

A couple other Best Fan Writer winners people might have been tempted to count came close, but no cigar.

The 1967 winner, Alexei Panshin, got his first non-fan nomination in 1969 in the Best Novel category for Rite of Passage. His other Hugo win came in 1990 for Best Nonfiction Book, The World Beyond the Hill (with Cory Panshin).

Wilson Tucker won Best Fan Writer in 1970 and was back on the ballot in 1971 in the Best Novel category for Year of the Quiet Sun.

(I have been over this count repeatedly, but I’m staying tuned for corrections just in case.)