The shortlist for the 35th Arthur C. Clarke Award has landed. The six titles are:

The Infinite by Patience Agbabi

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang

Edge of Heaven by R. B. Kelly

The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean McKay

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes

For the first time ever, all six shortlisted titles are debuts, which is interesting. If I were to use one word to describe this shortlist, it would be unexpected. Every shortlist is different, of course, but there’s something about this one that makes it more different. Because none of the authors here have previously featured, there is a quality of newness, of unparsability. And I like that. I like not knowing exactly what I think.

There are three books on here that are already on my to-read list, which is great, because I now have a definite context in which to read them. There are two books on this list I don’t know much about, which again is great, because I’ll be coming to them with no preconceived opinions. There is one book on this list I think I can safely say I would not have thought of reading, had it not been shortlisted, and that’s good too, because now I will.

The winner is being announced in September, which – I am delighted and relieved to say – gives me a good eight weeks to read everything, I shall be blogging my findings here. Sharkes take no prisoners.

Simultaneously with the shortlist, the Clarke Award’s administrator Tom Hunter released the full list of books submitted to the Clarke Award, all published in 2020, all given equal consideration by the jury. There were 105 books this time around, a good number, though not the highest. I have perused this list with great interest, as I always do, noting the increasing diversity and expanding definition of science fiction, year on year. I think it would be true to say that SF is as various and unpredictable as its many readers, each of whom would doubtless have their own list of priorities, their own ideal version of what science fiction could and should be.

The longer I read SF, the more I demand from it. I demand rigour, not in relation to scientific accuracy but in intellectual engagement. I demand beauty, not in terms of sense of wonder but in relation to language and form. I demand ambition, not in relation to copies sold, but in terms of how far the author is prepared to push against the boundary of their own abilities. I want books that risk failure in their pursuit of excellence. I want science fiction that fulfils the radical potential that is inherent in the very idea of SF. Will all the books on this shortlist meet these criteria? I can live in hope. Will I ever stop banging on about this? Never.

If I’d been picking the shortlist myself, here’s what it would look like, bearing in mind I’ve not read everything (nowhere near) and the impact of my own very specific biases:

Hinton by Mark Blacklock (one of the toughest but best achieved novels I read last year)

Ghost Species by James Bradley (Bradley is ridiculously underappreciated, one of the most committed speculative fiction writers out there)

The Silence by Don DeLillo (people are going to argue with me over this – I know some who think this book is empty, pared down so hard it barely exists – but if there’s a novel that better sums up our current state of unease I have yet to find it)

Gathering Evidence by Martin MacInnes (except maybe this one – MacInnes’s first novel was a best-of-year for me and this, his second, is if anything even better)

The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean McKay (my most anticipated novel on the actual shortlist, I’ve sampled the prose, straining with wild energy, and McKay has chosen an epigraph by Helen Garner – say no more)

Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin (a fantastic novel by a writer who remakes speculative fiction every time she puts pen to paper)

These are all novels I could read repeatedly, finding new insights each time. This also is a quality I demand from my SF. When I think of the books I return to time and again, in my mind as well as on the page, they all have about them the quality of mystery, of infinite possibility together with a certain inscrutability that is the hallmark of timeless classics in any genre. Here’s to discovering more of them, and good luck to all the shortlisted authors. Meet me back here soon for the first of six exciting voyages into the unknown.