To raucous cheers, the writer and director of the movie Galaxy Quest gushed as they accepted their Hugo award for Best Dramatic Presentation. It was the first time in years that a Hugo movie winner had personally accepted the award.

"We heard a rumor that this category might be eliminated because Hollywood doesn’t care," said writer Robert Gordon.

"To be acknowledged by this community is so gratifying," Gordon said. "The script was written as a valentine to the fans, because they are so unappreciated."

Vinge’s novel in set far in the future, with man battling interstellar foes. Vinge said he still believes in humanity's future as a spacefaring race, despite his disappointment with the pace of development.

"Space travel by itself is quite clearly a doable matter," Vinge told SPACE.com after the ceremonies. "Considering the sort of . . . destructive power we have, being stuck on Earth is like a bunch of people handcuffed to each other and stuck in a closet with a bunch of grenades. We have to get off for pure safety reasons."

An unexpected pause early in the ceremonies was the screening of a mini-documentary titled "Women’s Role in Science Fiction." It started out tamely enough, with a montage of scenes of helpless females being carried away by monsters, but the fans broke out into cheers when Sigourney Weaver torched a room full of egg sacs in Aliens, all to Pat Benatar’s "Hit Me with Your Best Shot."

Each of the actual Hugo trophies was escorted on stage by a different costumed woman. A security officer from Babylon 5, a Vogon from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and a buxom Klingon matriarch all swooshed on stage from behind the curtain to stand calmly next to the tuxedoed presenters.

Winners' speeches were short and to the point, even if they often did contain mini-advertisements, like the author’s web address, or a mention of her latest published story.

"There are those who say that science fiction magazines are an endangered species and won’t be around very long," said Asimov editor Gardner Dozois, accepting his award for Best Professional Editor. "But we at Asimov’s work hard to bring you the best science fiction we can in every issue."

Some took a wry approach.

"I actually wrote this out," said Cory Doctorow as he accepted the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer. "Goddamn, I can’t believe it," he deadpanned. "I won. I won. I won."

Others just gushed.

"Oh, you guys, you’ve got to stop doing this," Willis said. "A lot of people have said to me, ‘You can’t possibly care any more.' It’s such a lie, I do care, I really do!"

The winners had differing views on the changing face of science fiction, despite the triumph of old-school themes like space travel and an optimistic future.

Science fiction writers are "sort of where we were 50 years ago, which is to show people that there is a future and to get that out there," Best Short Story winner Michael Swanwick told SPACE.com. "I’ll be talking in a corporate setting and people say we don’t have any space program anymore. And I tell people that there are people in orbit right now, and they don’t believe me."

Doctorow, on the other hand, thought science fiction would soon transform radically, as copyright laws and patent laws fall and an open marketplace flourishes on the Internet.

"In the Dark Ages, there was no scientific method or peer review," Doctorow said. "Each gifted chemist had to reinvent the work of others. Chemistry was a voodoo science. Then with the advent of the scientific method and peer evaluation, chemistry blossomed. The same thing will happen in literature."

"Science fiction has always has a larger non-space part than people realize," Vinge said, noting advances in genetic manipulation and cybernetics. "There is always a real influence with whatever is going the farthest or advancing the fastest."

"These are all right over the horizon of having a major impact on people," he said.

Gordon, the screenwriter for Galaxy Quest, thought his movie appealed to the fans because it shared their wish to believe.

"I think in fandom, there’s just this tendency to believe and to be optimistic," Gordon said.

Or maybe the fans just loved the fact that Gordon and Parisot bothered to show up. Not only did they go crazy when the pair took the stage, they called them back out after their winning speeches.

Of course, that could have been because they had left their Hugo sitting on the podium.

A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge (Tor)

Galaxy Quest, directed by Dean Parisot; story by David Howard; screenplay by David Howard and Robert Gordon (DreamWorks SKG)

"The Winds of Marble Arch", by Connie Willis (Asimov's 10-11/99)

Best Novelette
(Six nominees due to a tie)

"10^16 to 1", by James Patrick Kelly (Asimov's 6/99)

"Scherzo with Tyrannosaur", by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's 7/99)

Cory Doctorow (2nd year of eligibility)

Michael Whelan

Science Fiction of the 20th Century, by Frank M. Robinson (Collectors Press)

Gardner Dozois (Asimov's Science Fiction)

Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown

File 770, edited by Mike Glyer

Dave Langford

Joe Mayhew