Time & Perspective Quote by Greg Egan

Egan’s line performs a neat little two-step: it downplays ambition while admitting how quickly the human brain recalibrates to new ceilings. He starts with studied nonchalance - “hadn’t given much thought” - the kind of modesty that reads as credible precisely because it’s coming from a writer with a scientist’s public persona: method, restraint, low tolerance for hype. Then the sentence pivots on the social fact of nomination. Once an institution has stamped you as “in the running,” the emotional math changes. Not because your work suddenly improves, but because the world has updated its estimate of you, and you can’t help but internalize that update.

The subtext is less about awards than about permission. Before the nomination, winning belongs to other people: the anointed, the famous, the ones who seem to have a narrative built for trophies. A nomination cracks that story open. It’s a Bayesian moment dressed as humility: prior improbability meets new evidence, and “less far-fetched” becomes the rational conclusion. Egan’s phrasing keeps the ego at arm’s length while still acknowledging the intoxicating shift from outsider to plausible contender.

Context matters: the Hugo isn’t just a prize; it’s a signal from a community that often prizes both imagination and legitimacy. For a hard-SF writer whose work can feel austere or rigorously technical, nomination functions as cultural translation: the gatekeepers and readers are saying, we’re with you. The quote’s quiet humor lies in how it treats aspiration as an emergent property of recognition, not a grand personal destiny.