At a ceremony on the evening of Thursday, August 15, 2019, at the 77th World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, the winners of the 1944 Retrospective Hugo Awards were announced. We’re delighted to announce that the award for the best short story went to Ray Bradbury for “King of the Gray Spaces” (later retitled “R Is for Rocket”) from his collection Famous Fantastic Mysteries, published in December 1943.
Bradbury would have been pleased at the company he kept in these retrospective awards. Best novella was won by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for The Little Prince, and best long-form dramatic presentation went to the original movie Heaven Can Wait, written by Samson Raphaelson and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Bradbury would also have been delighted and amused to learn that he’s still winning awards seven years after his passing. But then, he always did believe writing was a way to live forever.