Seiun Award

A professional work or achievement which appeared for the first time in the previous calendar year may be considered eligible. The eligibility of magazines is determined via nominal publication date, which often tend to be a month or two ahead of the actual date due to Japanese publication customs. There are no written rules about word count for literary fiction categories, so that the decision of eligibility in that regard is left up to the voters. Usually in spring, SFFAN issues reference nominee lists for reference in each category, which is chosen by the preliminary vote of their member groups. However, voters can cast their ballots for any eligible works outside of the list in the final ballot. With consideration for voters' availability, a work which appears in a magazine (such as a part of serialized works or short story) or released as audio-visual media (such as a TV show or film) but wasn't chosen for the reference nominee lists may be eligible again if published as a book or released in any other media format. Categories There are effectively no official English names for categories, so they vary depending on translators. For example, "Long Work" may be written as "Long Story", "Long Form", or "Novel"; "Short Story" may be referred to as "Short Form" and so on. == Winners and candidates ==