2015 #hugoawards winner Liu Cixin awarded best achievement prize at Xingyun Award for Chinese Sci-Fi Fiction pic.twitter.com/puDztOYYjc

— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) October 19, 2015

Liu Cixin, author of the “Three-Body” trilogy, won the “Best Achievement Award” during the 2015 Xingyun (“Nebula”) Awards for Global Chinese Science Fiction in Chengdu City on October 18.

More than 40,000 readers voted for the 12 prizes given during this year’s Xingyun Award. The ceremony was attended by over 1,000 science fiction writers and readers, both from China and abroad.

The only other winner announced by China’s English-language news services was for the best screenplay for a science fiction film.

This was awarded to “Mist,” which was written by Wang Kanyu and Wu Shuang, according to Dong Renwei, a science fiction writer and one of the founders of the Xingyun Award.

The annual award, created in 2010, is given by the World Chinese Science Fiction Association. It is the only award for Chinese-language science fiction works and writers that recognizes achievements regardless of place of publication.

The 2015 Xingyun Awards nominees in all 12 categories were posted by Amazing Stories in August. Interestingly, Best Achievement, the category just won by Liu Cixin, was not among the 12. Was this an extra honor inspired by the author’s Hugo win?