The Arthur C. Clarke Award 2008
The UK's Premier Prize for Science Fiction Literature
The shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2008, the UK's premier prize for science fiction literature, features a diverse range of novels.
The Arthur C. Clarke Award is the UK’s most prestigious award for science fiction and is recognised worldwide as being one of the most respected literary awards. Now in its twenty-second year, the Award carries a prize of £2008 and commemorative engraved bookend.
The 2008 Award winner will be announced on April 30th at a ceremony on the opening night of the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival.
The shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2008 is:
The Red Men by Matthew de Abaitua
The Red Men are intelligent, creative and entirely virtual corporate workers and Nelson is in charge of Redtown, the virtual city they inhabit. Redtown is also the place where new policies, diseases and disasters are studied to see how they would effect the non-virtual world. As the boundaries between Redtown and the real world become more and more blurred, Nelson fines that he must choose sides: the corporation or his family, the real or the virtual.
The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter
Liverpool in the early sixties is a city of danger and passion where a new kind of music is promising to change everything. Far away in Cuba a nuclear standoff is taking place which could change the face of the world forever. Somehow, caught in the middle of all of this is teenage runaway Laura Mann. Laura is being hunted by strange forces and is beginning to understand that her life is in danger.
The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall
As war rages around the world, Britain is run by a dictatorship known only as The Authority. Sister had attempted to escape the oppressive regime where every movement is monitored and women are fitted with compulsory contraception devices and, from her prison cell, she tells the story of The Carhullan Army, a commune of free women said to be living in remote Cumbria.
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
When Eric Sanderson awakes suffering from amnesia, a letter from “The First Eric Sanderson” directs him to Doctor Randle, a psychologist who helps Eric learn about his former life. Once Eric begins to unravel the secrets of his past, he finds himself on the run from the Ludovician, a species of purely conceptual fish that feed on human memories.
The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod
As war escalates and natural resources run low, superpowers, old and new alike, are preparing for the worst. James Travis is the middle manager of a software company with a son in the army and a daughter in a peace-protest camp outside a USAF base. He is also a fledgling agent of a foreign intelligence service. When his cover is blown, Travis, along with his son and daughter, must evade capture before a grainy video on The Execution Channel become their only memorial.
Black Man by Richard Morgan
Sevgi Eretkin and Tom Norton are sent to investigate the mysterious crash of a shuttle that was travelling between Mars and Earth, a crash that has left body parts strewn around the impact zone. They discover that one passenger, a Thirteen, one of a breed of perfect soldiers who were exciled to Mars once peace was established and their presence became dangerous, woke early from the cryogenic sleep required for the journey and survived the trip by eating his fellow passengers. The Thirteen has begun a killing spree on Earth and, since no one knows why, Eretkin and Norton team up with Carl Marsalis, a Thirteen who makes a living hunting down his brethren.
The Arthur C. Clarke Award is presented to the best science fiction novel of the year with the winner being selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year.
