The winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2022 is Deep Wheel Orcadia, by Harry Josephine Giles.
This book was first on my radar some months before its publication and I ordered my copy from our local bookshop as soon as it came out. A science fiction novel. By an acclaimed Scottish poet. In Orcadian Scots with parallel English text.
This couldn’t have been more up my street if it tried. I was delighted, and amazed, when it turned up on the Clarke Award shortlist, not least because the shortlist as a whole is one of the boldest and most exciting – for me, at any rate – in some years.
I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of Aliya Whiteley’s Skyward Inn and found it as original and thought-provoking as everything I’ve read from Whiteley, who, I firmly believe, is one of the most important writers working in British science fiction today. With this, her second appearance on the Clarke shortlist, I thought 2022 might be her year. That pleasure still awaits us, but her repeat shortlisting in and of itself is a welcome recognition of her considerable talent.
I wasn’t the hugest fan of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun – I found it bland and sketchily imagined, too reminiscent of the children’s fable it was originally intended to be. But I like Ishiguro. I admire his willingness to experiment with ideas, to keep moving forward. Each new book from him feels meant, as if he’s still considering its challenges even as it’s published. That quality of nervousness means I’m always eager to read his next work, as I will be again. I am glad the Clarke jury picked him out once more for further discussion.
I have not quite finished reading Courttia Newland’s A River Called Time yet – the reason this post is so delayed – but I love the writing, very much, and I was gratified to see the jury make yet another bold choice.
A good year. And what I notice now, as I look down the list of previous winners, is how excellent those winners have been, these past few years. Deep Wheel Orcadia is no exception, and this excites me. When a book like this appears, it throws positive energy back into science fiction, illuminating its possibilities, inspiring fresh approaches. i love it when that happens. Congratulations, Josie Giles, and to the Clarke Award jury, for rewarding a work that so powerfully showcases the radical ambition that will always characterise the best SF.