Arthur C. Clarke Award Finalists Announced

The Arthur C. Clarke Award finalists have been announced, and they are:

Matthew de Abaitua – The Red Men – Snow Books

Stephen Baxter - The H-Bomb Girl – Faber & Faber

Sarah Hall – The Carhullan Army – Faber & Faber

Steven Hall – The Raw Shark Texts – Canongate

Ken MacLeod – The Execution Channel – Orbit

Richard Morgan – Black Man (published as Thirteen in the US) – Gollancz

Former winners of the United Kingdom's most prestigious Science Fiction award have included China Mieville, Geoff Ryman, and Pat Cadigan. This is only the second time in the award's existence that the shortlist has been composed solely of UK authors. The annual award is presented for the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year.

From the administrators: "Featuring visions as diverse as a dystopian Cumbria and a future Hackney, time-travel adventures in 1960's Liverpool and an alternate world British Isles in the throes of terrorist attack, through to tech-noir thrillers and a trawl through subconscious worlds where memories fall prey to metaphysical sharks, the Clarke Award has never been so close to home and relevant to the British literary scene."

I'm thrilled to see so many books on this list that I haven't read, to be honest. Half of the nominees couldn't be called the "usual suspects" at all, while Richard Morgan richly deserves his nomination for Black Man. MacLeod's The Execution Channel was too didactic for my tastes, but a worthy attempt to inject politics into fiction. One glaring omission from this list, however, is the lyrical, daring, satirical, and just plain brilliant The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson. (US readers are just now having a chance to experience this novel, as it will be published in North America next month.)

Congratulations to all of the nominees. The winner will be announced on April 30th