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How the FUCK did this book win a Hugo?

It's not hard to explain, I suppose: insert infodumps of "hard" sf every few pages, focus the book on a bland every-man who pines for his untouchable childhood sweetheart, add a couple monologues about how humanity just wants to understand the universe but oh god it's so vast, and boom, a paint-by-the-numbers Hugo winner. It was SO FUCKING MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING.

Putting aside the main character, who has the internal life of a turnip and possibly even less of an external life (seriously all he does is follow Jason and Diane around and listen to their infodumps), the plot is nonexistent. Here's the premise: when Tyler and his bffs Jason and Diane are children, a membrane encloses the earth. A certain amount of sunlight is allowed through, but otherwise our planet is enclosed into almost cryogenic stasis, as one hundred million years pass outside the membrane and only one year within it. On the one hand, this means that within a single human lifetime, the sun will die. On the other hand, it means that when humans can remotely accomplish things in outer space we'd never dream of otherwise, like terraforming Mars in what seems to us like a single day. Cool! Unfortunately, this awesome astro stuff takes second seat to the interminable explanations of the incredibly obvious. Not a single chapter goes by without someone (er, let me rephrase--someone male. There are three supporting female characters: one is a religious nut, one says very little, and one is a drunk whose alcoholism is mentioned LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE TIME she is mentioned and who seems to exist solely so Tyler will seem well-informed in comparison. Absolutely none of these women have much in the way of dialog or personality, and none of them have agency in the plot.) telling another character something obvious. Here's an example:

She [Jason's mom, a physician who is now an alcoholic, oh hey, did I mention she drinks? She drinks. She's always drinking!] looked genuinely frightened. "Is any of this true, Jason?"
"Most all of it," Jason said calmly.
"Are we really on the brink of disaster?"
"We've been on the brink of disaster since the stars went out."
"I mean about oil and all that. If the Spin hadn't happened, we'd all be starving?"
"People are starving. They're starving because we can't support seven billion people in North American-style prosperity without strip-mining the planet."

WOW. Jason is the only person to have ever realized we might run out of oil. This is an example of a big problem with this book: the only way Jason and Tyler are able to be smart is by writing everyone around them as ignoramuses. At another point, Tyler goes off on his hot young fuck-buddy because she dismisses Spin as "We're in a sort of cosmic baggie and the universe is spinning out of control, yada yada yada." This pretty accurate summary apparently warrants a two-page diatribe wherein Tyler decries the common public's astronomical ignorance. Jason or Tyler explains the idea that time passes differently inside and outside the membrane surrounding the earth like fifteen times in this book. Thanks, but I got it the first time; it's not that complex an idea. Wilson has an annoying tendency to try to create tension by cutting people off in the middle of exposition, just when they're poised to reveal something big. Aside from the clear artificiality of the device, the reveals are never actually that surprising. (view spoiler)[OMG the aliens had a reason for putting the earth inside a time-controlling membrane! OMG the mysterious love letters came from a woman! OMG other races have come up with the idea of sending out self-replicating networks to transmit data! OMG the Martians actually have their own culture! Duh. (hide spoiler)]

Sorry for all the capslock. This book was a disappointment.