Hot on the heels of the BSFA Award Winners and the Hugo shortlist comes the Clarke Awards, as we affectionately know 'em. The six shortlisted books for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of the year published in 2014 are:
The Girl With All The Gifts - M.R. Carey (Orbit)
The Book Of Strange New Things - Michel Faber (Canongate)
Europe In Autumn - Dave Hutchinson (Solaris)
Memory Of Water - Emmi Itäranta (HarperVoyager)
The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August - Claire North (Orbit)
Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel (Picador)
The 6 shortlisted titles were selected from a list of 107 individual eligible submissions, put forward by 36 different publishing houses and imprints.
None of the authors above have been listed for this award before, and what a fantastically broad and diverse mix of science fiction books they represent. We also note that two of our own shortlist for the BSFA Awards have made this list - Dave Hutchinson's Europe in Autumn and Claire North's the First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, so that's yet another ringing endorsement for these two books.
Award Director Tom Hunter said, "This is a quintessentially Clarke Award kind of a shortlist of exactly the sort that we've become known for over the years and always love to celebrate. Congratulations to all of our shortlisted authors, their publishing teams and, of course, a big thank you to everyone on our judging panel this year [...] A good shortlist isn't a statement about what you should like, it's an invitation to go beyond the limits of what you already know so you can experience and enjoy something new. Why limit an appreciation of a literature that's built on the power of human imagination?"
We would also like the thank the judges here at the BSFA. It's not so easy to get through 107 books! You've done us proud.
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2015 are:
Duncan Lawie, British Science Fiction Association
- Nicholas Whyte, British Science Fiction Association
- Sarah Brown, Science Fiction Foundation
- Lesley Hall, Science Fiction Foundation
- Leila Abu El Hawa, SCI-FI-LONDON film festival
Andrew M. Butler represents the Arthur C. Clarke Award in a non-voting role as the Chair of the Judges.
The winner will be announced on Wednesday 6th May at an exclusive award ceremony held at Foyles Bookshop, London, and taking place as part of the activities leading up to the SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival.
The winner will be presented with a cheque for £2015.00 and the award itself, a commemorative engraved bookend.