The annual Arthur C. Clarke award is given for the best science fiction novel first published in the UK during the previous year. Read on for this year’s shortlist…
CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (book available)
Welcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars – the controversial entertainment programme inside America’s prison system. In packed arenas, livestreamed to millions, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. Fan favourites Loretta Thurwar and Hamara ‘Hurricane Staxxx’ Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. But as protestors clash with the baying crowds and the programme’s corporate owners stack the odds against her – will the price be simply too high?
THE TEN PERCENT THIEF by Lavanya Lakshminarayan (book and ebook available)
Welcome to Apex City, formerly Bangalore, where everything is decided by the mathematically perfect Bell Curve. With the right image, values and opinions, you can ascend to the glittering heights of the Twenty Percent – the Virtual elite – and have the world at your feet. Otherwise you risk falling to the precarious Ten Percent, and deportation to the ranks of the Analogs, with no access to electricity, running water or even humanity. The system has no flaws. Until the elusive ‘Ten Percent Thief‘ steals a single jacaranda seed from the Virtual city and plants a revolution in the barren soil of the Analog world.
IN ASCENSION by Martin MacInnes (book and ebook available)
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as a refuge from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the marine world of her childhood, she excels in postgraduate research on ancient algae. When an unfathomable vent appears in the mid-Atlantic floor, Leigh joins the investigating team; what she finds there will change her life forever. Around the same time, a trio of engineers, unknown to each other, make a seismic breakthrough in rocket propulsion, announcing an almost limitless era of space exploration. Billions of dollars is poured into projects, and Leigh’s classified research on the ocean vent sees her recruited to develop an experimental food source for off-world travel. From her base in the Mojave desert, she’s drawn further into the space agency’s work, where she learns of a series of anomalies suggesting a beacon sent from the far side of the solar system.
THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA by Ray Nayler (book available)
There’s something in the water of Con Dao. To the locals, a monster. To the newly minted corporate owners of the island, an opportunity. To the team of three sent to study and protect, a revelation. Here developed, for an unknown number of years, the first known sentient species beyond humans in the modern era. Their minds are unlike ours. Their bodies are malleable, transformable, shifting. They can communicate. And they want us to leave.
SOME DESPERATE GLORY by Emily Tesh (book available)
All her life, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the destruction of planet Earth. Raised on Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. Then Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons, and she knows she must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands. Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr must escape from everything she’s ever known.
COREY FAH DOES SOCIAL MOBILITY by Isabel Waidner (book available)
This is the story of Corey Fah, a writer on the cusp of a windfall, courtesy of the Social Evils prize committee, for whom the actual gong – and with it the prize money – remains tantalizingly out of reach. Neon beige, with UFO-like qualities, the elusive trophy leads Corey, with partner Drew and surprise eight-legged companion Bambi Pavok, on a spectacular detour through their childhood in the Forest – via an unlikely stint on reality TV. Navigating those twin horrors, through wormholes and time loops, Corey learns – the hard way – the difference between a prize and a gift.
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