Have you ever found yourself engrossed in a science fiction classic – say, John Wyndham’s “Sleepers of Mars,” C.S. Lewis’s “Out of the Silent Planet” or Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Carson of Venus” – and thought what a pity it is that they were published before 1953, when the Hugo Awards, one of science fiction’s most prestigious prizes (along with the Nebula Awards) were first given?
You are apparently not alone. The World Science Fiction Society, which awards the Hugos annually and also runs Worldcon – formally, the World Science Fiction Convention, at which the prizes are given – decided in the mid-1990s that the creators of great sci-fi in the pre-Hugo years should have a shot at the prize. Their solution was the Retro-Hugo, a prize the society has awarded only three times – in 1996, 2001 and 2004, in each case honoring works published 50 years earlier.

Full article at New York Times