Torque Control has posted the shortlist for the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award:
- Zoo City – Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)
- The Dervish House – Ian McDonald (Gollancz)
- Monsters of Men – Patrick Ness (Walker Books)
- Generosity – Richard Powers (Atlantic Books)
- Declare – Tim Powers (Corvus)
- Lightborn – Tricia Sullivan (Orbit)
I have a problem with it.
The Clarke Award, for best science fiction novel published for the first time in the UK in the previous year, had fiftyfour submissions this time. I’ve read exactly six of them and not one of them is on the shortlist, though The Dervish House is on my to be read pile. But that’s not what bothers me: perhaps if I had read all fiftyfour submissions I would’ve come to the same conclusions as the jury has made. The problem I have is not with the list as a whole, but with one particular entry: Tim Powers’ Declare.
Not with the book itself, but with the fact that it was first published in the US in 2001. So what’s it doing on an Clarke Award shortlist a decade later?
Well, it was never published in the UK until last year, which is why it was eligible. But that doesn’t mean it should be put on the shortlist. Because doing so means that the jury thought a decade old novel was superior to all but four of the fiftyfour novels submitted, that the best British science fiction publishing can do is to republish old US sf novels.
Which can’t have been the jury’s intent, can it?