Given the extraordinary circumstances, I think we can all forgive the Clarke Award for running a little late this year. The shortlist is usually announced in May, but with the lockdown coming into force more or less exactly when we would normally expect to see the submissions list being published (and Clarke season thus officially open), the schedule has been knocked somewhat off-kilter. (I’m sure the Zoom meetings have been numerous and legendary.) But with bookshops in England opening their doors again this week, there is the possibility that an actual Clarke Award ceremony might be able to go ahead in some form. And whatever happens with regard to the announcement, we can at least be sure the books are on bookshops’ shelves and available to buy. All of which adds up to one great thing, or rather two: the Clarke Award shortlist and the submissions list have just gone live.
The Clarke Award shortlist for 2020 is as follows:
– The City in the Middle of the Night – Charlie Jane Anders
– The Light Brigade – Kameron Hurley
– A Memory Called Empire – Arkady Martine
– The Old Drift – Namwali Serpell
– Cage of Souls – Adrian Tchaikovsky
– The Last Astronaut – David Wellington
My first reaction was one of pleasure at seeing Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift on the list as it a) looks outstanding and b) happens to be on my to-read list anyway. I have heard good things about Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, and I enjoyed Charlie Jane Anders’s debut All The Birds in the Sky, so I’ll be interested to see where her follow-up takes me. The other three books have interesting premises and it’ll be fascinating to see what new insights these authors can bring to tried-and-tested tropes. I’m planning to read and blog the whole shortlist between now and the announcement of this year’s winner in September, so we’ll find out together.
I’m also going to be trying something of a different approach in my reading and reviewing of this shortlist. For the getting-on-for-two-decades I’ve been taking an active interest in the Clarke Award, I’ve tended to judge the shortlists against my own expectations and preferences. (I think this is something we all do, regardless of whether we choose to put those judgements into print.) This year, I intend to judge each of the shortlisted titles against itself: what is the author trying to do, how well has the author succeeded, and what does their book have to say about science fiction now?
This is going to be fun.
I couldn’t leave things there though, could I? “In past years we’ve opted to publish the submissions list in advance of the announcement of our official shortlist, but 2020 is far from a normal year, and with apologies to those in the science fiction community who enjoy the conversation and debate that our submissions list can generate, we have opted to publish this year in conjunction with the reveal of our six shortlisted books.” explains the award’s director Tom Hunter in the statement that accompanies the announcement. “We plan to announce the winner in September 2020, with a final date to be confirmed soon, and in the meantime I invite everyone to think of themselves as Clarke Award judge for a moment and ask, ‘if it were up to me, which 6 books would I choose and why?'”
How could I resist? In accepting Tom’s invitation, I have gone one further and, I hope, added extra value. Having spent some time going over the submissions list, I noted a couple of surprising omissions, books that, for whatever reason, were not submitted (Tim Maughan’s Infinite Detail most inexplicably, but also Cynan Jones’s Stillicide and Jesse Ball’s The Divers’ Game, which I was particularly pleased to see cropping up earlier this week on the Neukom Award shortlist alongside Matt Hill’s articulate and innovative Zero Bomb). Of the 122 books that were submitted, many are excellent – so excellent I found it impossible to decide on a personal shortlist without whittling them down. So in order to make things easier for myself, I first selected a putative longlist – a Booker’s Dozen:
My Name is Monster by Katie Hale (Canongate)
Zero Bomb by M. T. Hill (Titan)
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (Hamish Hamilton)
Always North by Vicki Jarrett (Unsung Stories)
The Migration by Helen Marshall (Titan)
Ness by Robert Mcfarlane and Stanley Donwood (Hamish Hamilton)
Do You Dream of Terra-Two by Temi Oh (Simon & Schuster)
From the Wreck by Jane Rawson (Picador)
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (Hogarth)
Doggerland by Ben Smith (4th Estate)
Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer (4th Estate)
Plume by Will Wiles (4th Estate)
Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson (Cape)
(NB: I would almost certainly have included and possibly shortlisted Yoko Ogawa’s elegantly understated The Memory Police, were it not for the fact that this novel was actually first published in its original Japanese in 1994, and it seems odd to me to have a book that is a quarter of a century old competing against brand new works. This is not Ogawa’s fault, of course, and I would urge anyone who has not yet discovered her work to do so as soon as possible. The Memory Police reminds me potently of Karin Tidbeck’s Amatka, which has been one of my favourite science fiction novels of the past decade.)
I like this longlist. I think it showcases a wide array of themes and approaches, which taken together offer a genuine insight into the power and diversity of speculative fiction now, and I can’t help feeling sorry that only one of these titles made it to the official shortlist.
The problem and the fascination with any judging process is that it is so personal. Part of what I love about the Clarke Award is the perennial questions it throws up: what is best, what is science fiction, should a shortlist be reflective (this is where the field is at) or provocative (this is where the field should be at)? Anyone who follows my criticism will know I tend heavily towards the latter end of the opinion spectrum: I firmly believe that an award like the Clarke should promote works that push the genre envelope, that offer a radical interpretation of the term ‘science fiction’, that it should be more than just a popularity contest (we have the Hugos for that) or a ramshackle assemblage of the judges’ ‘favourite’ books. A shortlist should have definition, it should say something about the field other than ‘these books all came out last year and we enjoyed reading them.’
I would never assume that my criteria are correct, simply that they are mine, they have been consistently mine, and that I continue to stand by them. With all these things in mind, my personal preferred Clarke shortlist for 2020 would be as follows:
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James – because I need this in my life. I have not read the whole of this book yet – it’s massive! – but I love James’s writing so much and the scope of Black Leopard is epic. ‘But it’s fantasy!’ I hear the purists cry. You say fantasy, I say alternate world.
The Migration by Helen Marshall – because Marshall’s approach to the post-apocalyptic novel is powerful and timely (pandemics, climate change), because I love the way she makes use of realworld historical material (the Black Death), and because her writing and characterisation, as always, is so beautifully achieved.
From the Wreck by Jane Rawson – because this is probably the book I’m most disappointed not to see on the actual shortlist. I think the blend of realworld family history and science fiction is incredible and because this book and this author deserve more readers.
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell – because the premise of this book sounds fascinating, the writing looks astounding and I can’t wait to read it.
Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer – because it is one of the boldest and most impassioned novels of 2019 and its difficulty is part of its magic. This is truly an important text, one of the most arresting and original treatments of the theme of climate change that has yet been written.
Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson – because it is striking, allusive, experimental – and Frankensteinian. Also because I think Winterson has written enough speculative fiction now for ‘people’ to stop referring to her as a tourist and to start discussing her contribution as the vital thing it is.
So there they are, my cards on the table. I may actually blog Black Leopard, Red Wolf alongside the official shortlist because I can’t think of a better time to get back to reading it (if not now, when?) Either way, my Clarke-related posts should not get in the way of Weird Wednesdays, although you may see a Clarke book being the subject of a Weird Wednesday every now and then, when I get pressed for time. The main thing is that the Clarke, as ever, should continue to provide an essential focus for discussion and reflection on the landscape of science fiction as we perceive it in the current moment. On that promise, I think we can safely say it has already delivered.