Piece of THE MARTIAN trivia that I learned:

[xiphias]

Even though the Hugo committee decided that THE MARTIAN wasn't eligible for a Best Novel Hugo, due to its weird publication history timeline (its eligibility period was counted from when it was first self-published online, but it didn't become well known until it was published in a dead-tree version in stores), the movie nonetheless will have its Hugo connection. The guy who did the script has two Hugo noms with one win for his work on BUFFY and ANGEL.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

How do you know the Hugo committee decided that?

To put this another way, do you know that enough people nominated it and they then decided it was ineligible? And if so, how do you know that?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Excellent question. I was going by "everybody knows." Which, come to think of it, isn't a reason. There had been a lot of discussion about it, which had come down to, "probably not, because it was pretty clearly published in 2012," but OLD MAN'S WAR showed up a possible exception. Most people, including Weir, read the rules and came down on the side of "probably not," but I can't find any official ruling, so we probably won't know for sure until the dataset is released after Worldcon.

It's also possible that people refrained from nominating, BECAUSE the conventional wisdom is that it's not eligible.

But, given the book's remarkable popularity, and that it's pretty much Hugo-bait in style, and that it has won other popularity awards, it seems to me that its ineligibility is the most likely reason.

Still, now that you point it out, I realize that that is an assumption.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think they would have so ruled, and I think this was discussed in fannish circles online before nominations closed and everyone agreed it was ineligible. But things are SO WEIRD with this year's ballots, that if we knew it had been nominated (despite not being on a Puppy slate) and then disqualified, that would be a big piece of information from which conclusions could be drawn.

We know, for instance, that a novelette was so disqualified after having been announced.

A lot of awards geeks are very much looking forward to seeing the post-Hugo stats this year.