Jeff VanderMeer’s story of a doomed scientific expedition into the closed-off “Area X”, Annihilation, has won the American novelist the Nebula award for best novel.

The prestigious prize, won in the past by names from Larry Niven to Isaac Asimov, is voted on by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. VanderMeer beat the authors Katherine Addison, Charles E Gannon, Ann Leckie, Cixin Liu and Jack McDevitt to take the best novel trophy for the first instalment of his Southern Reach trilogy.

The novelist was not present at the ceremony, but in a speech read by his friend and fellow author Usman Tanveer Malik, he said it was the first time he had won a literary prize, despite being nominated for many.

“Which is funny because I wrote this novel while I had severe bronchitis, and for a long time thought maybe I’d just written something aimless about four women wandering a wilderness landscape that happened to resemble the 14-mile trail I hike in north Florida,” he said. “Also, given that the Southern Reach trilogy as a whole is an examination of the dysfunction and absurdity found in human-created systems, it’s astonishing to me that I was up for a Nebula rather than this year’s Hugo. For which fact I am eternally grateful, however.”

VanderMeer was referring to what the author George RR Martin has called “the controversy that has plunged all fandom into war” over this year’s Hugo awards. This year a group of right-wing writers calling themselves the Sad Puppies mobilised voters to flood the Hugo shortlists with nominations of their choice, to overcome what they saw as the award’s tendency to reward novels which are “niche, academic, overtly to the Left in ideology and flavour, and ultimately lacking what might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun”.

A handful of writers nominated for Hugos have subsequently withdrawn from the running, citing their wish to disassociate themselves from another group of campaigners, the “Rabid Puppies” , whose views are more extreme than the “Sad Puppies”. One of the authors, Marko Kloos, had been up for the best novel but said that “if this nomination gives even the appearance that [Rabid Puppies leader] Vox Day or anyone else had a hand in giving it to me because of my perceived political leanings, I don’t want it”.

His novel was subsequently replaced by The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu), which missed out on the Nebula to VanderMeer.

In his acceptance speech, the Annihilation author called it “an encouraging sign” that The Three-Body Problem made the ballot this year, expressing the hope that it marked “the start of a trend”.

“I’m uncomfortably aware of the fact that for a lot of international writers, US- and UK-based awards seem distant and inaccessible,” said VanderMeer. “The more that writers from outside of the Usual Places feel like their work is being seriously considered, the more we build a broader and more diverse community. The more we enrich our own work as well.”

The 2015 Nebula ceremony also saw Yesterday’s Kin by Nancy Kress win the best novella prize and Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon win best short story, with Alaya Dawn Johnson taking both the best novelette award for A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i, and best young adult novel for Love is the Drug.

The Damon Knight grand master award, meanwhile, was given to Larry Niven, with his novel Ringworld cited as “a classic of the genre”, which “influences readers and writers alike”.