{"id":2804,"date":"2011-03-06T18:28:15","date_gmt":"2011-03-06T23:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2011\/03\/06\/where-the-2011-clarke-award-went-wrong\/"},"modified":"2011-03-06T18:28:15","modified_gmt":"2011-03-06T23:28:15","slug":"where-the-2011-clarke-award-went-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2011\/03\/06\/where-the-2011-clarke-award-went-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the 2011 Clarke Award went wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<cite>Torque Control<\/cite> has posted the <a href=\"http:\/\/vectoreditors.wordpress.com\/2011\/03\/04\/the-2011-arthur-c-clarke-award-shortlist\/\">shortlist for the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><cite>Zoo City<\/cite> \u2013 Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Dervish House<\/cite> \u2013 Ian McDonald (Gollancz)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Monsters of Men<\/cite> \u2013 Patrick Ness (Walker Books)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Generosity<\/cite> \u2013 Richard Powers (Atlantic Books)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Declare<\/cite> \u2013 Tim Powers (Corvus)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Lightborn<\/cite> \u2013 Tricia Sullivan (Orbit)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nI have a problem with it.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe Clarke Award, for best science fiction novel published for the first time in the UK in the previous year, had <a href=\"http:\/\/vectoreditors.wordpress.com\/2011\/02\/28\/2011-arthur-c-clarke-award-submissions\/\">fiftyfour submissions<\/a> this time. I&#8217;ve read exactly six of them and not one of them is on the shortlist, though <cite>The Dervish House<\/cite> is on my to be read pile. But that&#8217;s not what bothers me: perhaps if I had read all fiftyfour submissions I would&#8217;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&#8217; <cite>Declare<\/cite>.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNot with the book itself, but with the fact that it was first published in the US in 2001. So what&#8217;s it doing on an Clarke Award shortlist a decade later?\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWell, it was never published in the <em>UK<\/em> until last year, which is why it was eligible. But that doesn&#8217;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.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWhich can&#8217;t have been the jury&#8217;s intent, can it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Torque Control has posted the shortlist for the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award: Zoo City \u2013 Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot) The Dervish House \u2013 Ian McDonald (Gollancz) Monsters of Men \u2013 Patrick Ness (Walker Books) Generosity \u2013 Richard Powers (Atlantic Books) Declare \u2013 Tim Powers (Corvus) Lightborn \u2013 Tricia Sullivan (Orbit) I have a problem [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}