The 2024 shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award science fiction book of the year has been announced, and it includes one of SciFiNow’s Book Of The Month choices!
The shortlist for the 38th Arthur C. Clarke Award science fiction book of the year is:
Chain-Gang All-Stars — Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Harvill Secker)
The Ten Percent Thief — Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Solaris)
In Ascension — Martin MacInnes (Atlantic Books)
The Mountain in the Sea — Ray Nayler (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)
Some Desperate Glory — Emily Tesh (Orbit)
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility — Isabel Waidner (Hamish Hamilton)
“In addition to six new writers joining the Clarke Award’s shortlist ranks, we were delighted to receive submissions from a record-breaking 50 eligible publishing imprints this year,” said Award Director Tom Hunter. “We hope this speaks to the future health and depth of the genre across the UK’s publishing industry even as the task of defining science fiction becomes ever more challenging for our judges!”
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2024 are:
- Dolly Garland and Stark Holborn for the British Science Fiction Association.
- Nic Clarke and Tom Dillon for the Science Fiction Foundation.
- Glyn Morgan for the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival.
“This year’s shortlist takes us from the deepest oceans to furthest outer space – with satire, time travel, aliens, octopuses, supercomputers and a six-legged Bambi. Many thanks to returning judge Stark Holborn and to neophytes Nic Clarke, Tom Dillon, Dolly Garland and Glyn Morgan for selecting six writers new to the Arthur C. Clarke Award. I suspect the final decision will be very close indeed,” added Chair of Judges, Dr Andrew M. Butler.
This year’s winner will be announced on Wednesday 24th July 2024. The winner will receive a trophy in the form of a commemorative engraved bookend and prize money to the value of £2024.00; a tradition that sees the annual prize money rise incrementally by year from the year 2001 in memory of Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
The award was originally established by a generous grant from Sir Arthur C. Clarke with the aim of promoting science fiction in the United Kingdom, and is currently administered by the Serendip Foundation, a voluntary organisation created to oversee the on-going delivery and development of the award.
We chose Lavanya Lakshminarayan’s The Ten Percent Thief as our top SFF book release back in March, and we spoke to Lakshminarayan about the novel in our exclusive interview, which you can read here.
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