Sixteen months ago, I said that Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union was the first novel I'd ever read with "an equal chance of winning not only the Hugo AND the Edgar." Though the Mystery Writers of America ultimately gave the Edgar for best novel to John Hart's Down River, by then the Science Fiction Writers of America had already presented Chabon with this year's Nebula award—and now the genre's fans have reaffirmed the novel's popularity, at last night's Hugo Awards ceremony at the World Science Fiction Convention in Denver.

"I am thrilled," Chabon emailed the day after the awards were announced. "Seriously. To be in the company of Dune, Ringworld, Lord of Light, The Left Hand of Darkness... Those were and remain crucial novels for me, key texts of worldbuilding. They and so many other Hugo winners ("Ill Met in Lankhmar," "The Last Castle,") helped shaped my idea of what novels and novelists are supposed to do... I was especially honored that the great Mr. George R. R. Martin, one of my favorite writers, was kind and gracious enough to agree to accept the award on my behalf, since I couldn't be there."

(Three months ago, in an interview with GalleyCat, Chabon described how he'd written the stories that led to The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, his debut novel, after early attempts to workshop genre fiction had met with scorn from his creative writing classmates, and had only in recent years taken his fiction "more clearly into the place I always wanted to be.")

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is not the first novel to win both the Hugo and the Nebula, but it is arguably the first time that either award has been given to a book that was not published as a science fiction or fantasy novel. (It all depends on your perspective on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.)

In a neat twist, although John Scalzi's The Last Colony was just nine votes shy of that best novel prize, Scalzi picked up the best fan writer award, largely on the strength of his blog, Whatever (which, you might recall, is on my ultimate blogroll). This is the first time in twenty years anybody other than Dave Langford has taken the category.