Over at Tor.com my friend Frank Wu has been talking about the Best Fan Artist Hugo. This has always been something of a Cinderella category. It is the one about which I can pretty much guarantee people will say to me, “but I don’t know anyone to nominate,” and “I don’t know any of the people on the ballot.” Jonathan Strahan said that to me during the Hugos chat we did for StarShipSofa. Then I explained to him who one of those nominees was, and why he was on the ballot, and suddenly Jonathan had someone he very much wanted to vote for. Oddly enough, it is the same person that Frank is talking about.

I have been aware of Dave Howell’s fan art for some time. At the Toronto Worldcon I fell in love with his clock face design, “Constantly Ticking”, so I wasn’t entirely surprised to see him chosen as the Hugo base designer for Montréal. However, I wasn’t quite prepared for him to produce the most talked about Hugo base in years. When the 2009 trophy was unveiled, everyone in the pre-ceremony reception suddenly wanted to win one very badly.

Of course I was lucky enough to do so, and I am enormously grateful to you all for voting for me. But I am also enormously grateful to Dave for making such a beautiful trophy. I hoping that he gets one of his own this year.

Frank promises to talk about the other Fan Artist nominees in later blog posts, so keep an eye on Tor.com if you have a vote.