Arthur C. Clarke Award and Ditmar Awards

The winner of the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award (British, juried award) was announced today: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot).

The winners of this year’s Ditmar Awards (Australian, fan-voted) were presented two days ago at Swancon in Perth: Best Novel: Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Voyager).

Zoo City is available in the United States, Power and Majesty is not. The Clarke Award has just the one category: best novel. The Ditmars have a lengthy list of categories, much like the Hugos. One award caught my eye: Best Fan Publication: Galactic Suburbia podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Alex Pierce. I've been enjoying this podcast for the past several months. Each of the three hosts picked up multiple Ditmar Awards this year.

Related links:
Beukes Wins Arthur C. Clarke Award
Ditmar Awards

2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz)

Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness (Walker Books)

Generosity by Richard Powers (Atlantic Books)

Declare by Tim Powers (Corvus)

Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan (Orbit)

The Arthur C. Clarke Award is a British jury award for science fiction novels published in Britain in 2010, which explains the oddity of a Tim Powers novel published in the USA in 2000 appearing on the list.

I’ve only read two of the books, Declare and The Dervish House. Declare is likely Tim Powers’ best novel to date (as I once wrote and as Gary K. Wolfe holds in the most recent Coode Street Podcast). The Dervish House is probably Ian McDonald’s best novel to date. If the other nominees are up to that level, and I have no reason to suspect they are not, then this is a strong list indeed.

For a science fiction award there is a surprising amount of fantasy on the list (Declare, for instance).

The nationality of the shortlisted authors has been the subject of some discussion (Cheryl’s Mewsings). They are a South African (Beukes), two Americans (Powers and Powers), two Americans living in Britain (Ness and Sullivan), and one lifelong Brit (McDonald).

This year’s judges were Paul Billinger, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Martin Lewis, Phil Nanson, Paul Skevington, and Liz Williams. The winning novel will be announced April 27, 2011, in London.

Related links:

Torque Control on the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist

Graham Sleight at the Locus Roundtable on the 2011 Clarke Award Shortlist

A Link, a Dink, and a Nod

Philip K. Dick's Exegesis
According to The New York Times, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish a two-volume "consolidated" Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, edited by Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson. Volume one is due 2011, followed by volume two in 2012.

“The title he gave it, ‘Exegesis,’ alludes to the fact that what it really was, was a personal laboratory for philosophical inquiry,” Lethem said. “It’s not even a single manuscript, in a sense – it’s an amassing or a compilation of late-night all-night sessions of him taking on the universe, mano-a-mano, with the tools of the English language and his own paranoiac investigations.” (The New York Times article.)

The City & The City by China Miéville wins Clarke Award
The Arthur C. Clarke Award winner was announced: The City & The City by China Miéville. A respectable result and an interesting book, although here at the Strangelove for Science Fiction blog we likely would have voted for one of the other finalists: Gwyneth Jones’ Spirit,  Kim Stanley Robinson’s Galileo’s Dream, Adam Roberts’ Yellow Blue Tibia, Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, or Marcel Theroux’s Far North. We will have to duck the question of which one we would have picked, since we are still reading the finalists. Follow here for the SF Strangelove review of The City & The City. Torque Control has an interesting analysis of the finalists and a report and context regarding the winner.

Adam Roberts goes 'round and 'round with The Wheel of Time

Reading the multi-volume and popular and as yet unfinished Wheel of Time series by the late Robert Jordan can be described as an epic undertaking. Adam Roberts has bravely shouldered the task. So far, he has reported, in witty detail, on volumes one, two, three, four, five, six and seven.