The British Science Fiction Association, the Science Fiction Foundation and the Sci-Fi-London film festival have announced the shortlist for this year’s 34rd Arthur C. Clarke Award.
The Award’s Chair of Judges, Dr. Andrew M. Butler noted that this year’s selection “felt as if we were actually inside an sf novel when we chose these half dozen books — it was our first virtual meeting.”
“Listening to the deliberations of our judges this year, I was reminded again of the depth of passion that can power and unite our science fiction community, and what shines through for me in the choices of this year’s panel is this sense of shared love for the sf genre.”
Here are this year’s finalists:
- The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders (Titan)
- The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley (Angry Robot)
- A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (Tor)
- The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (Hogarth)
- Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Head of Zeus)
- The Last Astronaut by David Wellington (Orbit)
The award’s panel of judges, which includes Stewart Hotston, Alasdair Stuart, Farah Mendlesohn, Chris Pak, and Rhian Drinkwater, selected the six titles out of a list of eligible submissions. This year’s winner will be unveiled in September 2020, and the winning author will receive a cash prize of £2020.00, as well as an award plaque.
Last year’s winner of the award was Tade Thompson’s Rosewater, with Sue Burke’s Semiosis, Yoon Ha Lee’s Revenant Gun, Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, Simon Stålenhag’s The Electric State, and Aliya Whiteley’s The Loosening Skin named as finalists.
