The heated discussions of the past few days have led me, perhaps inevitably, to go back and look at the Clarke Award shortlists that have inspired and perplexed us over the course of the past decade. The welcome practice of releasing the submissions list is a relatively recent thing (how interesting it would be to see which novels were submitted during the 90s and early 2000s – I love stuff like this) and looking back there’s only so much we can guess about the political hinterland of earlier award slates. Of those years where the submissions list has been available for our inspection, I think it’s fair to say that in each and every instance there has been at least one surprising, not to say inexplicable omission from the eventual shortlist. Perhaps in the long run what we will say of 2012’s shortlist is that it was the sheer quantity of quality omissions that made it stand out. One thing is for certain, though: the Clarke Award has highlighted some magnificent books over the years, which is, we all surely agree, the main point of it.
In celebration of that and just for fun really I’ve decided to make a list of the books I would put on the shortlist for my own Clarke of Clarkes. Ten books instead of six to reflect the fact that this is a decade’s worth of novels, all of them drawn from the existing shortlists 2003-2012.
I have to stress that I have not – far from it – read every book on every shortlist, so my selections cannot be described as completely informed and impartial. But here goes anyway:
Pattern Recognition (2004 shortlist) William Gibson
The Carhullan Army (2008 shortlist) Sarah Hall
Nova Swing (2007 winner) M. John Harrison
Never Let Me Go (2006 shortlist) Kazuo Ishiguro
The Dervish House (2011 shortlist) Ian McDonald
Speed of Dark (2003 shortlist) Elizabeth Moon
Hav (2007 shortlist) Jan Morris
The Separation (2003 winner) Christopher Priest
The Testament of Jessie Lamb (2012 shortlist) Jane Rogers
Anathem (2009 shortlist) Neal Stephenson
Now that would be one mean competition!
Looking at this list now that I’ve chosen it I’m struck by how satisfying it feels as a whole, how full of creative nourishment. You could exile yourself to a desert island with this lot and feel confident about retaining most of your sanity. There are books here I’ve read thrice over and hope to read several times more before I die. There are others I am less well acquainted with but still hope to draw strength from. Hav sparkles like a brilliant-cut diamond. The very thought of Anathem makes me hyperventilate over the sheer power and scale of Stephenson’s literary and intellectual ambition. Never Let Me Go continues to vex me with its imperfections, yet the understated beauty of its writing and the very real chill it delivers keep drawing me back. Leaving aside The Testament of Jessie Lamb, which is of course still in contention, you’ll notice that only two of the books I’ve selected here actually won the award in the year in question, a fact that, once again, reflects the diversity of opinion that exists, and will always exist, among both readership and judges.
The book that didn’t win that I think most deserved to? Probably The Dervish House. But hey, at least it got shortlisted……