Hugo Awards honors 19 sci-fi winners

The Hugo Awards, the world's top sci-fi awards, were announced on Saturday night at the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention.

Nineteen sci-fi works, artists, writers and editors won the awards in such categories as Astounding Award for Best New Writer, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, Best Fan Artist, Best Fan Writer, Best Fancast, Best Fanzine, Best Editor, Best Dramatic Presentation, Best Short Story, Best Novelette, Best Novella and Best Novel.

American novelist T. Kingfisher's Nettle & Bone won the best novel award.

American writer Seanan McGuire's Where the Drowned Girls Go won the best novella award.

Chinese writer Hai Ya's The Space-Time Painter won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

Hai created the story inspired by a painting masterpiece Qianli Jiangshan Tu (A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains) by Wang Ximeng from the Song Dynasty (960-1279), who painted the work at the age of 18. Based on the life of Wang, Hai created a painter named Zhao Ximeng, a prodigy that painted for the emperor more than 1,000 years ago. After much misery and suffering, Zhao abandoned his physical body and entered a space where a modern policeman that was investigating a case concerning an ancient painting got into his memory. The story, through the twists and turns in Zhao's life, reveals the political struggles behind this marvelous painting and the struggles and fights of individuals against the torrents of time. Working in the financial industry and a sci-fi fan, Hai, now 33, started writing sci-fi stories in 2016 and published his first work in 2019. Pitying on Wang who was so talented but had such a short life, Hai extended his life through sci-fi, he said in previous interviews.

Chinese artist Zhao Enzhe won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist. Hailed as "the Liu Cixin in the illustration field" and best domestic artist in terms of interstellar sci-fi content, Zhao's works have won many domestic awards.

His collection of sci-fi illustrations Xingyuan Bian (The Faramita of Galaxy) published in 2020 won the Galaxy Award for best related book in 2021, China's top sci-fi award.

In a previous interview, Zhao said that almost all his works were created when he kept exploring the frontier of sci-fi and Chinese traditional culture.

"I always recommend the style of Chinese ancient paintings, graceful and full of vitality," he said, adding that "ancient Chinese culture provides the best style for sci-fi and with my efforts, I hope I can bring more sci-fi artworks with Chinese philosophical thinking to foreign audiences."

Chinese fan magazine Zero Gravity Newspaper co-founded by RiverFlow and Ling Shizhen won the best fanzine award.

The Worldcon will close on Sunday. It is the first time the world's top sci-fi convention was held in China.