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.
Seiun Award
It is similar to the Hugo Award, which is presented by the members of the World Science Fiction Society, in that all of the members of the presenting convention are eligible to participate in the selection process. But it is not strictly correct to call it Japan's "equivalent" to the Hugo Awards, as the Hugo Awards are open to works from anywhere in any language while the Seiun implicitly limited the area and the language like as the BSFA Award.