John Scalzi’s name was missing from the slate of nominees for the 2009 Best Fan Writer Hugo, an outcome he invested sincere effort to achieve, actively drawing his readers’ attention to the work of other fans during the nominating phase. Still, I’d thought it would be impossible for him to shed all the momentum produced by winning the Hugo in 2008 and falling just one vote shy of a victory in 2007.

So I posed the question, had he received a nomination and declined it? Scalzi graciously answered:

No. I was simply not nominated this year. I did spend a fair amount of time during the nomination window encouraging people not to nominate me and to instead nominate other folks who were new and/or had not previously won the category, so I can’t say that I was surprised not to be nominated. I can say that had I been nominated, I would have declined the nomination (although had I declined, I would not have commented until after the the awards ceremony).