Back to entry: aelita_award | Show links blue

Aelita Award

In its heyday the most prestigious Russian sf award, founded in 1981 by the Russian Federation Writers' Union and Ural'skii sledopyt ["Urals Pathfinder"] magazine. The latter was published from the city of Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk until 1991), and this the ceremony was held there as part of the annual Aelita Convention. The winner is chosen by a panel of judges. The Aelita was instituted as an award for the best single sf work published in the previous year, though with two presentations in 1981, the second being to Alexander Kazantsev for his work as a whole. Further categories (not listed below) were added in 1987. Following a short hiatus in 1995-1996, the award was reinstated in 1997 as a life achievement honour.

The Aelita was initially presented for Soviet sf and later for Russian sf only; in 2019 it was decided to expand the zone of eligibility to the entire world, and in 2020 Michael Swanwick became the first US winner. [DRL/A/VG]

Aelita Award winners

links

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 09:36 am on 28 March 2024.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/aelita_award>