2013 Clarke Award Shortlist

[james_davis_nicoll]

The six shortlisted books for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of the year 2013 are:

Nod by Adrian Barnes (Bluemoose)
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway (William Heinemann)
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (Headline)
Intrusion by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

Total  Female  Male  f/t
   6      0    6     0

Congratulations to the Clarkes for resisting the deadly temptation to produce a more diverse nominee list, especially given the outrageous - by what appear to the current standards of British SF - presence of women, persons of colour and Muslims on the submissions list. In particular I'd like to praise you for snubbing Alif the Unseen, which could have only embolden those people into further creativity in the field of SF and for picking KSR's proud tribute to colonialism and American Exceptionalism IN SPACE! over, say, Blue Remembered Earth, whose author fell into the dark error of actually paying attention to recent trends in Africa.

Total  Female   Male   f/t
 83     17.5    65.5   .21

The Submissions List for 2013:

The Children’s Hospital by Chris Adrian (Grant)
Crewel by Gennifer Albin (Faber & Faber)
vN by Madeline Ashby (Angry Robot)
Zero Point by Neal Asher (Tor UK)
The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi (Atom)
Pure by Juliana Baggott (Headline)
Juggernaut by Adam Baker (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
Nod by Adrian Barnes (Bluemoose)
Turbulence by Samit Basu (Titan Books)
Iron Winter by Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman (Sceptre)
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)
Exit Kingdom by Alden Bell (Tor UK)
The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
The Dream Killer of Paris by Fabrice Bourland (Gallic Fiction)
Existence by David Brin (Orbit)
alt.human by Keith Brooke (Solaris)
Helix Wars by Eric Brown (Solaris)
The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington (Orbit)
Empire State by Adam Christopher (Angry Robot)
Celebrant by Michael Cisco (Chomu Press)
The Lost Men by David A. Colón (Elsewhen Press)
Caliban’s War by James SA Corey (Orbit)
London Falling by Paul Cornell (Tor UK)
The Twelve by Justin Cronin (Orion)
Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan (Canongate)
Earth Girl by Janet Edwards (HarperVoyager)
The Eternal Flame by Greg Egan (Gollancz)
The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Stranger’s Magic by Max Frei (Gollancz)
Blue Friday by Mike French (Elsewhen Press)
The Thousand Emperors by Gary Gibson (Tor UK)
EVE: Templar One by Tony Gonzales (Gollancz)
Blackout by Mira Grant (Orbit)
The Ward by S.L. Grey (Corvus)
Champion of Mars by Guy Haley (Solaris)
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway (William Heinemann)
Empty Space by M. John Harrison (Gollancz)
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (Headline)
Wool by Hugh Howey (Century)
Worth Their Weight in Blood by Carole Jahme (Mira Books)
Insignia by S.J. Kincaid (Hot Key Books)
The Games by Ted Kosmatka (Titan Books)
The Company of the Dead by David J. Kowaski (Titan Books)
Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove (Solaris)
Intrusion by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
The Killables by Gemma Malley (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus (Granta)
In the Mouth of the Whale by Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
Chimera by T.C. McCarthy (Orbit)
Transmission by John Meaney (Gollancz)
The Glimpse by Claire Merle (Faber & Faber)
Railsea by China Miéville (Macmillan)
Kimberly’s Capital Punishment by Richard Milward (Faber & Faber)
Thy Kingdom Come by Simon Morden (Jurassic London)
LiGa by Sanem Ozdural (Elsewhen Press)
The Chosen Seed by Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)
The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter (Doubleday)
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor UK)
The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi (Gollancz)
Pulse by Tricia Rayburn (Faber & Faber)
The Demi-Monde: Spring by Rod Rees (Jo Fletcher Books)
Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
Jack Glass by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
Triggers by Robert Sawyer (Gollancz)
Redshirts by John Scalzi (Gollancz)
The Fury by Alexander Gordon Smith (Faber & Faber)
The Explorer by James Smythe (HarperVoyager)
The Testimony by James Smythe (Blue Door)
Crandolin by Anna Tambour (Chomu Press)
Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem (Solaris)
Entanglement by Douglas Thompson (Elsewhen Press)
Communion Town by Sam Thompson (4th Estate)
Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis (Orbit)
Ecko Rising by Danie Ware (Titan Books)
The Outcast and the Little One by Andy West (NewCon Press)
Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson (Corvus)
Place of Dead Kings by Geoffrey Wilson (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Method by Juli Zeh (Harvill Secker)
The Return Man by VM Zito (Hodder & Stoughton)

Comments

[mcbadger.livejournal.com]

But it's ok, because at least one of the judges was a woman who's willing to stand up and explain it all:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2013/apr/04/feminist-all-male-clarke-prize-shortlist


I'll be over there -> pretending I'm Belgian or something.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

What would you have them do? Choose books they thought were less-good, just because they were written by women?

Female somewhat anti-feminist friend of mine says she has struggled her whole life proving she was a "real" whatever (in various contexts where most are male) and hadn't just gotten in via affirmative action, and it seems to rather annoy her.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Who had 'two comments' in the Quota pool?

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I can't seem to find that book on Amazon.com. Can you give more info?

Ah, it's Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson, I presume. I note that the author is using the telltale "initial for a first name" thing, presumably to disguise the presence of girl cooties?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I can't seem to find that book on Amazon.com.

Gee, I wonder why--

Ah, it's Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson, I presume.

--Well, there you go. It's unseen!

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I deleted my comment to replace it with a corrected version.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I wasn't trying to be rude, I was genuinely confused. I blame a mutual lack of caffination.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

All the best book by a woman would have to clear to make the top six is 2312, which is less a bar and more a deep trench. Alif the Unseen easily manages the task and I am sure there were others.

[(Anonymous)]

It's been a generation, almost, since I've been able to finish a book by KSR, whose work for a while I quite liked. It's not his politics, sexual attitudes, ethnic sterotyping, et cetera, that stops me, I think, as I rarely get far enough into one of his books for that to matter. He just bores me. Which is a pity because on occasion the type of thing he is writing about (e.g. the Mars trilogy) is very much to my taste.

However, he's won a number of awards since I gave up on him, and I have to recognize that many people not only finish, but greatly enjoy his more recent works. Persistance is a lot in this world, I expect him to continue to be nominated, and possibly win awards. But I don't expect him ever again to write a book I will like.

Instead I imagine "Blue Mars", "Antarctica", etc as these wonderful books out there - I even think I know the plots - which I will somehow never read, as I will probably never read "Coriolanus".

William Hyde

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Damn. I had "one comment".

[dovekie.livejournal.com]

An all-male list shows that they're already judging by something other than quality.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

This leads us into the wider conversation as to why, despite having a significantly enlarged entry this year (a 36 per cent increase on the 60 books submitted in 2012) we received disproportionately fewer from women, of which many were technically fantasy.

And the annual Award for Recognition of Great Achievements in China Meiville can't sully itself with fantasy.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Oh. Her again.

[(Anonymous)]

Apparently four out of the five judges are women. I suspect this year's judges might have applied a very strict "it has to be Science Fiction" filter. Which would have tended to exclude women from consideration due to the UK's small amount of published Science Fiction by women.

Also, is it me or has the last week being incredibly busy SF newswise? Between the Hugos, the Clarkes, the Dick, the BSFAs and the Banks news it seems chocabloc.

Stephen Shevlin

[bibliolicious.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Alif the Unseen yet, but I'd got the impression it was fantasy rather than sf. Not that this has stopped previous Clarke juries - e.g. Mieville has won several times for fantasy - but it's up to each set of judges to formulate its own definition of sf, and maybe Alif didn't meet this group's particular test?

As I and several others have noted elsewhere, I think the main problem here is not so much this year's all-male, all-white shortlist (although it's certainly a shame), as the very limited pool of eligible sf by non-male, non-white writers the jury had to work with. The situation in the UK is pretty dire in that regard; 'women don't write sf' seems to be the governing logic in all too many quarters, and it's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, if publishers believe adult sf by women doesn't sell, what is a women author who would quite like to have a sustainable writing career going to do, but go write fantasy and/or YA?

There are some better prospects for 2013, albeit mostly debuts while more established women authors like Gwyneth Jones languish out of contract. Fingers crossed EJ Swift, Kameron Hurley, Karen Lord et al can build UK audiences quickly enough, because their books are all well worth reading.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I suspect its exploration of Muslim religious belief (within an information-age fantasy setting) might have played a role.

I ain't saying that the judges [list here] are a bunch of scoffing Dawkinsite and/or Islamophobic types. But Alif might have struck them as being less what science fiction is "about" than something like 2312.

And that's a problem, because Alif is a pretty good book. I'm not planning on reading 2312, but I trust James's judgment that it's wretched.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I think we can allow that there are reasons to leave Alif off a shortlist beyond its theology. Its prose tends to the functional and transparent, for instance; occasionally witty, but rarely insightful or beautiful. Its central emotional arc is, in the end, a rather familiar heterosexual male YA coming of age. And its plot is rather lazy in a couple of spots, and cops out entirely in the last twenty pages in a way that undercuts one of the central themes of the story rather badly.

(And so far as the theology goes, an Islamic scholar of my acquaintance spotted a few linguistic and historical errors -- trivial stuff in the larger scheme, not things that really affect the success or failure of the novel, minor dents in readerly trust only. The sort of errors that, were they made in physics rather than theology, would have our host pointing and mocking, though...)

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

The question to my mind is, is it better than 2312? James provides a strong case for the prosecution, and the defenses seem tepid.

(I am predisposed not to enjoy Robinson anyway. His prose rarely clicks for me. I'm pretty well-calibrated, but it might be a blind spot. I'm on record as saying Robinson should stick with light humorous short stories.)

Are the theological errors better than, say, the thermodynamic errors about windmills in Red Mars?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Well, she gets the date of Muhammad's birth wrong, for instance. Is that better or worse? Hard to believe it's more than just carelessness, but of all the things to be careless about...

I've never been convinced by complaints about the windmills. The point of them in the trilogy is that they don't work, at all, as advertised, but in the heat of the moment they scare/trick/give an excuse for starting terraforming efforts. If they don't work in the real world but for different reasons ... Eh. I have a hard time getting worked up over a writer having the wrong reasons for something not working.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

The collapse of the space elevator bothered me, but I made the mistake of assuming Robinson ran the numbers -- which is an example of his talent, I suppose. Numerical simulations show that a cable cut at the counterweight would crack like a whip instead of merely winding around a planet. Physical intuition should have told Robinson that too: he has the counterweight asteroid flying off to parts unknown.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Is that better or worse?

Much much better obviously: getting a date wrong is one of those things that can just be a typo; carefully describing the failure mode of windmills only for that failure mode to be dribbling nonsense is a different matter entirely.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

What bothered me about it was that he seemed to successfully fool everyone, when any observer with an undergraduate understanding of physics should have seen that there was something screwy about the windmill scheme.

[scott-lynch.livejournal.com]

I may be misremembering, but I thought that it was made pretty explicit in the text that the little windmills were actually Saxifrage Russell's cover for the release of some kind of terraform-oriented biologicals (algae or bacteria?). Most of my books are in boxes at the moment, or I'd be happy to hunt it down myself.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

They are. The issue is that the cover story is obviously nonsensical. If your big plan for a cover story is to say "Hey, chums! Let's violate basic laws of thermodynamics!" to a bunch of scientists, you need to rethink your plan.

In KSR's defense, he's clearly an ignoramus who found a profitable line selling Whole Earth Catalog-style fantasies.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

That's last year's jury. This year's is listed at the top of the announcement at tor.com (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/2013-clarke-award-shortlist-announced).

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[gareth-wilson.livejournal.com]

If an entirely non-sexist jury was selecting from that submissions list, and their selections were entirely random with respect to gender, they'd get an all-male shortlist every four years. Can't really see that as much of an outrage.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

1) So I should get Alif the Unseen?

2) I think I've suggested this before, but have you considered creating your own award? I realize there's little prestige in a new award, but you could fix that over time, no?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

You should.

I don't read widely enough to justify my own award. Although if I suddenly found myself in possession of a fortune I might reconsider that stance.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll get it tonight. Have to decide B&N or Amazon; there's a price difference there. I have no idea why I worry about a $2 price difference.

I wasn't thinking you'd do an award by yourself. I would presume it would be a committee, although you would pick them. Were you to do this, I would be willing to offer a small amount (say, US$500?) as an award; maybe others would be willing to do so as well.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

The Clarke jury always gets to pick its own definition of SF (and indeed 'novel', and 'published this year'), and I'm not too upset if they've chosen to exclude Alif the Unseen on the grounds that it's urban fantasy, even if it was a better book than 2312. The argument in favour of The Method or Pure or Earth Girl maybe Boneshaker is a bit stronger if you want to go for SF.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* really.

Why dont they just call it the White Male Writer Award? Those Girl Writer Cooties are terrifying to a lot of folks.

[timill]

Because it would upset the last two winners: Lauren Beukes and Jane Rogers.

[mcbadger.livejournal.com]

Indeed, it looks as though this year is a bit of an outlier, in that it's the first time since 1988 that the shortlist has been all-male. 8 female winners in those last 25.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

10 female winners. That is 37% of the total, well above the submission rate for women for the period that data is available (from 2005 or so).

[mcbadger.livejournal.com]

And possibly above the shortlist rate, too, which while it has sometimes been 1/6, occasionally reached the dizzying heights of 3/6.

OK, still a bit of a shame to see this shortlist this year, but it doesn't seem fair to regard the Clarke award as chronically part of the problem. (My arithmetic skills might be another matter).

Edited to add: that doesn't mean I think this year's shortlist is irreproachable, just that I don't think the Clarke award is as chronically bad as some posts here are suggesting. Librarything & Goodreads ratings would place Alif the Unseen above 2312 and Intrusion, for whatever that may be worth; I have no personal view as I've yet to read any of them. I have Alif, will pick up Intrusion, and don't really enjoy KSR enough to pick up 2312 even if I hadn't been put off by the comments of James and others.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

And possibly above the shortlist rate, too

Yes.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

So how long will it be before the Clarke Award stops providing opportunities to make the "Have we lived and fought in vain" joke? Ever? Maybe we really have lived and fought in vain.