As a youth I used to live in the shelves of my local video store. Most summers I would spend my days down at the local strip mall (a scant 1.3 miles away) bowling for hours, reading comics off the rack at the drug store, picking out the most essential candy at the grocery store and finally wandering in the stacks, searching for the perfect movie to watch that weekend. All this time spent in the stacks lead to a curious skill of recognizing films based solely by their cover art, and I’d often know the plot of the films based off of the descriptions on the back. Soon it became a bit of a game for my friends to quiz me on what the films were about, but only the films I’d never actually seen and using simply the cover as a hint.

Of course, back then I was still very young and simply didn’t have the time nor the resources to watch every film I wanted to. So I would pick and choose which I would watch, often leaning heavily towards science fiction and fantasy films (my horror obsession didn’t really kick in until my early twenties). So how is it that I never watched a post-apocalyptic film about a nomadic swordsman? Simple, I hated the cover.

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While most people know the Hugo Awards as a literary award for the top science fiction and fantasy works of the past year they also hand out awards for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form & Short Form. The Long Form award typically is for the best film with occasional audio books garnering recognition as well, while the short form is typically dominated by television shows. Like most awards, the Hugo’s are voted upon by the members of Worldcon, which is dominated by science fiction and fantasy authors and creators. In conjunction with the Nebula Awards, the Hugo represents the highest honor for science fiction and fantasy creators.

This year marked a landmark group of possible winners for the Long Form category. Nominees included Wall-E, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Hellboy 2 and METAtropolis (an audio book). One of the more interesting aspects of the Hugo Award voting system is that they not only publish the voting results (you paying attention Oscars) but they also employ run off voting making for some interesting results. As for the actual winners, you might be surprised to learn that Wall-E beat out The Dark Knight to win the 2009 Hugo Award.

Even more exciting was the winner of the Short Form Award, that being the online mini series Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog, which beat out episodes of Doctor Who, Battlestar Gallactica and Lost to take the award. That’s one heck of a feat for a web series to knock off the three biggest science fiction television shows currently going.

For those of us who dig the minutia, the voting results are after the break.

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