The winner of the 36th Arthur C. Clarke Award is Harry Josephine Giles, for the novel Deep Wheel Arcadia. Andrew M. Butler, chair of the judges, said in a statement, “Deep Wheel Orcadia is the sort of book that makes you rethink what sf can do and makes the reading experience feel strange in a new and thrilling way. It’s as if language itself becomes the book’s hero and the genre is all the richer for it.”
Deep Wheel Orcadia is a verse novel written in the Orkney dialect. The Guardian called it “a book of astonishments,” saying, “It threads together questions of identity and belonging, alongside examinations of deep space and Orkney, in a single concisely yet scintillatingly told tale. Giles also makes language shift like the stormy Orcadian seas.”
Giles receives £2022 and a trophy in the shape of a bookend.
The other shortlisted novels for this year were Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro; A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine; A River Called Time by Courtitia Newland; Wergen: The Alien Love War by Mercurio D. Rivera; and Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley.
Each year, the Clarke Award is given to the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected by a panel of judges from organizations that support the award. This year’s judges were Crispin Black (British Science Fiction Association), Stark Holborn (British Science Fiction Association), Phoenix Alexander (Science Fiction Foundation), Nicole Devarenne (Science Fiction Foundation), Nick Hubble (SCI-FI-LONDON film festival). Butler, the non-voting chair, is from the Serendip Foundation, which administers the award.
