Hugo Award
The World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) gives out the Hugo Awards each year for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, who founded the pioneering science fiction magazine "Amazing Stories" and who is considered one of the "fathers" of the science fiction genre. Works are eligible for an award if they were published in the prior calendar year, or translated into English in the prior calendar year. There are no written rules as to which works qualify as science fiction or fantasy, and the decision of eligibility in that regard is left up to the voters, rather than to the organizing committee. Hugo Award nominees and winners are chosen by supporting or attending members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon, and the presentation evening constitutes its central event. The selection process is defined in the WSFS constitution as instant-runoff voting with five nominees per category, except in the case of a tie. The awards are split over more than a dozen categories, and include both written and dramatic works.
Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
The award was first presented in 1958, and with the exceptions of 1964 and 1966 was given annually through 2002 when it was retired in favor of the newly created Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) and Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) categories, which divided the category depending on whether the work was longer or shorter than 90 minutes. In the 1964 and 1966 awards there were insufficient nominations made to support the category. Prior to 1971, the category was defined as including works from "radio, television, stage or screen", and thereafter was expanded to "any medium of dramatized science fiction or fantasy", resulting in the nomination of recorded songs and other works. In addition to the regular Hugo awards, beginning in 1996 Retrospective Hugo Awards, or "Retro Hugos", have been available to be awarded for years 50, 75, or 100 years prior in which no awards were given. To date, Retro Hugo awards have been awarded for 1939, 1941, 1943, 1946, 1951, and 1954; the 1946 and 1951 awards were for the Best Dramatic Presentation category while the 1939 and 1954 awards were for the Short Form category. There were insufficient nominations to support an award in the Long Form category for those years. The 1941 awards were for both Long and Short Form.