While I’m writing this, the Clarke Award judges and their chairman are in a meeting, making their final decisions (and, we would hope for nothing less, having their final arguments) about which six novels should make up this year’s Clarke Award shortlist. With the announcement of that shortlist just four days away, I thought it would be fun to cast a last look back over the list of submissions, and make my own final prediction about what that shortlist might look like. I’ve read a few more of the submitted titles since my first guesses, and in any case, two months is a long time in SF – opinions, emphases, gut feelings can change. So let’s do it! Here’s my predicted shortlist for March 18th:
The Secret Knowledge – Andrew Crumey. I’m reading this at the moment, and it’s lovely. Like all of Crumey’s work, The Secret Knowledge presents the perfect example of a ‘non-genre’ work that doesn’t shy away from science fictional ideas. It’s beautifully written (with Crumey you take that for granted) but it’s not overwritten. Direct, clear, engaging from the first page, I like this in the same way I liked Robert J. Lennon’s Familiar, but on balance I like it even more, probably because it’s less coy about being SF. I’m full of enthusiasm for The Secret Knowledge, and my Crumey Crusade goes on.
Wolfhound Century – Peter Higgins. Just a feeling, a sudden hunch. I reckon there’ll be an almighty row about the ending – in that there isn’t one – but that a couple of judges will be passionate enough about this book (the writing is very lovely, and the alt-Russia setting, whatever my own personal misgivings, will command significant attention) to see it win a place among the shortlisted six.
Ancillary Justice – Ann Leckie. I think this is going to be a shoo-in. Big, far-future SF, intelligently written and with some engaging core concepts, probably the most discussed SF novel of 2013 and how could it escape notice here? I think its emotional range is limited, and my eventual verdict on this book will be determined by where and how far Leckie goes from here. But I can understand why the judges would want to select it, and I won’t mind seeing it on the shortlist if they do.
A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki. An interesting case, this. I think it will divide opinion – some will see it as tediously self indulgent, others will see it as sensitive, beautifully written and radical in its ideas and the way it conveys them. Oddly, it’s kind of both things at the same time. It’s actually a novel with a great deal to say, and – given the complexity of some of the subjects involved – it says it gracefully and well. But it is one of those novels (I’m becoming increasingly impatient with them, interestingly) that dance around their science fictionality without ever properly coming to terms with it. Chris bailed on this book after forty pages. I read the whole thing, with increasing enjoyment and appreciation, but without ever entirely losing my doubts. A sincere and talented writer, certainly, but will she take her Kitschies win as a signal to continue her explorations in SF? I don’t think so, somehow.
The Adjacent – Christopher Priest. This book does everything the Ozeki doesn’t do and then some. It’s proper SF, from a master of the genre, genuinely chilling, rapturously beautiful, compellingly mysterious. A novel that readers and critics will still be enthusing and puzzling over a hundred years from now, the judges would have to be mad not to include it.
The Machine – James Smythe. A small but perfectly formed novel. Great core conceit, beautifully executed with excellent sense of place and good characterisation. Demonstrates that British SF is alive and well and doing interesting things. I think this one will be a favourite of all the judges, and will wing it through to the shortlist as a result.
Well, that’s my guess – as it turns out, books from all three of my previous putative shortlists are on there, together with one title that wasn’t on any of them. But it’s so difficult to call! Quite a lot depends on how rigorous this year’s judging panel are going to be about the whole SF/Fantasy divide. If they’re fantasy liberals, we might well see Patrick Ness, Jess Richards, Andrei Kurkov or Wu Ming-Yi making an appearance. If they’re hardline SF purists, there’s a higher likelihood that Paul McAuley or even Greg Egan might make a showing. Meanwhile, I’m still carrying a personal torch for Matt Hill’s The Folded Man, Marcel Theroux’s Strange Bodies, and Tony White’s Shackleton’s Man Goes South.
Well, the decision is being made even as we speak. To say I’d love to be a fly on the wall is an understatement, but as always, all we ask is that the judges give us a shortlist that will make us think, argue, spark decades-long feuds and – most of all – help turn some new readers on to SF and its infinite possibilities for intellectual exploration and creative expression.
Let it be so.