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The full submission list is revealed for the prestigious science fiction prize
The organisers of the Arthur C Clarke Award have revealed the line-up of books submitted for consideration to win the 2014 award. A total of 121 eligible books were put forward by 42 separate publishing imprints, the most ever received by the award and smashing the previous high record set only last year of 82 books received from 32 publishing imprints.
This is not a long list in the traditional sense, rather a list of every eligible title submitted for consideration by the award’s judges. The figures show that Gollancz submitted the most books (14), followed by Orbit and Titan (both publishers submitting 11 books). The information offers a snapshot of the current state of science fiction publishing, and helps readers everywhere to breakdown, analyse and enjoy the full range of submitted titles in as many creative ways as possible before the official short list of six is announced on Tuesday 18 March.
Award Director Tom Hunter says: “We’ve seen a rapid rise in the number of books being put forward to the award in the last couple of years, but we still thought last year’s record number of 82 books from 30 separate publishing imprints was going to prove a high mark. To put this year’s rise in context, when I first became involved with the award eight years ago, we were receiving approximately 40 books a year in full, so between 2013 and 2014 we’ve jumped up by the total number of books we were receiving only a few years ago, which is simply amazing.”
To what does Hunter attribute this rapid rise? “I think we can identify several key reasons,” he continues. “The first is simply that the award is becoming increasingly well known, and more publishers outside of the SF genre core are getting in touch to put work forward. Likewise those same publishers are also going through changes of their own, and we’ve seen a real positive switch towards genre prizes from mainstream publishers – it’s definitely a case of them calling us to put books forward, not us chasing around trying to get specific titles sent in for consideration. I also suspect these changes reflect a broader popular cultural shift, and I’m not surprised that the publishing industry is increasingly recognising the commercial potential of science fiction and fantasy, or the advantage of publishing towards a readership that is both highly engaged and highly communal, especially online where long term word of mouth can have an amazingly positive and powerful effect for authors. An effect we’ve started to think of unofficially as the power of the Geek Pound.”
The judging panel for the Arthur C Clarke Award 2014 are:
Duncan Lawie, British Science Fiction Association
Ian Whates, British Science Fiction Association
Sarah Brown, Science Fiction Foundation
Lesley Hall, Science Fiction Foundation
Georgie Knight, SCI-FI-LONDON film festival
Andrew M Butler represents the Arthur C Clarke Award in a non-voting role as the Chair of the Judges.
The award was originally established by a generous grant from Sir Arthur C Clarke with the aim of promoting science fiction in Britain, and is currently administered by the Serendip Foundation, a voluntary organisation created to oversee the on-going running and development of the award.
This year’s winner – to be revealed at the Royal Society on Thursday 1 May as part of the SCI-FI-LONDON festival – will be presented with a cheque for £2014.00 and the award itself, a commemorative engraved bookend. Click through to see the full line-up…
Books submitted for the Arthur C Clarke Award 2014
Here’s the full list of 121 books that will be judged ahead of the March shortlist…
Finches Of Mars (opens in new tab) by Brian W Aldiss (The Friday Project)
iD (opens in new tab) by Madeline Ashby (Angry Robot)
Jupiter War (opens in new tab) by Neal Asher (Tor)
Maddaddam (opens in new tab) by Margaret Atwood (Bloomsbury)
The Beautiful Land (opens in new tab) by Alan Averill (Titan)
Fortune’s Pawn (opens in new tab) by Rachel Bach (Orbit)
The Gods Of Atlantis (opens in new tab) by Alan K Baker (Snowbooks)
Dream London (opens in new tab) by Tony Ballantyne (Solaris)
Gideon Smith And The Mechanical Girl (opens in new tab) by David Barnett (Snowbooks)
Lexicon (opens in new tab) by Max Berry (Mulholland Books)
Proxima (opens in new tab) by Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
The Beauty Of Murder (opens in new tab) by AK Benedict (Orion)
Terra (opens in new tab) by Mitch Benn (Gollancz)
The Shining Girls (opens in new tab) by Lauren Beukes (HarperCollins)
Without Warning (opens in new tab) by John Birmingham (Titan)
The Aylesford Skull (opens in new tab) by James P Blaylock (Titan)
What Lot’s Wife Saw (opens in new tab) by Ionna Bourazopoulou (Black & White Publishing)
Tourmaline (opens in new tab) by James Brogden (Snowbooks)
Bedlam (opens in new tab) by Christopher Brookmyre (Orbit)
The Serene Invasion (opens in new tab) by Eric Brown (Solaris)
Arctic Rising (opens in new tab) by Tobias S Buckell (Del Rey)
The Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier (opens in new tab) by Jack Campbell (Titan)
Dreams And Shadows (opens in new tab) by Robert C Cargill (Gollancz)
The Bone Dragon (opens in new tab) by Alexia Casale (Faber & Faber)
The Lives Of Tao (opens in new tab) by Wesley Chu (Angry Robot)
The Mad Scientist’s Daughter (opens in new tab) by Cassandra Rose Clarke (Angry Robot)
Conquest (opens in new tab) by John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard (Headline)
Abaddon’s Gate (opens in new tab) by James A Corey (Orbit)
The Secret Knowledge (opens in new tab) by Andrew Crumey (Dedalus)
Homeland (opens in new tab) by Cory Doctorow (Titan)
Pirate Cinema (opens in new tab) by Cory Doctorow (Titan)
The Rapture Of The Nerds (opens in new tab) by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross (Titan)
The Arrows of Time (opens in new tab) by Greg Egan (Gollancz)
The Circle (opens in new tab) by Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton)
Fearsome Dreamer (opens in new tab) by Laure Eve (Hot Key Books)
The Fictional Man (opens in new tab) by Al Ewing (Solaris)
Queen Of Nowhere (opens in new tab) by Jaine Fenn (Gollancz)
Seoul Survivors (opens in new tab) by Naomi Foyle (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Stranger’s Shadow (opens in new tab) by Max Frei (Gollancz)
Convergence (opens in new tab) by Mike French (Elsewhen Press)
The Ocean At The End Of The Lane (opens in new tab) by Neil Gaiman (Headline)
Marauder (opens in new tab) by Gary Gibson (Tor)
The Falling Sky (opens in new tab) by Pippa Goldschmidt (Freight)
Ectopia (opens in new tab) by Martin Goodman (Barbican Press)
Parasite (opens in new tab) by Mira Grant (Orbit)
2121 (opens in new tab) by Susan Greenfield (Head of Zeus)
Shopocalypse (opens in new tab) by David Gullen (Clarion)
The Humans (opens in new tab) by Matt Haig (Canongate)
Crash (opens in new tab) by Guy Haley (Solaris)
Stray (opens in new tab) by Monica Hesse (Hot Key Books)
Wolfhound Century (opens in new tab) by Peter Higgins (Gollancz)
The Folded Man (opens in new tab) by Matt Hill (Sandstone Press)
The Secret Of Abu el Yezdi (opens in new tab) by Mark Hodder (Del Rey)
A History Of The Future In 100 Objects (opens in new tab) by Adrian Hon (Skyhook)
The Darwin Elevator (opens in new tab) by Jason M. Hough (Titan)
Dust (opens in new tab) by Hugh Howey (Century)
Valour’s Choice (opens in new tab) by Tanya Huff (Titan)
Apocalypse Now Now (opens in new tab) by Charlie Human (Century)
God’s War (opens in new tab) by Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)
Phoenicia’s Worlds (opens in new tab) Benjamin Jeapes (Solaris)
Alias Hook (opens in new tab) by Lisa Jensen (Snowbooks)
The Clone Rebellion: The Clone Republic (opens in new tab) Stephen L. Kent (Titan)
The Curiosity (opens in new tab) by Stephen Kiernan (John Murray Press)
Doctor Sleep (opens in new tab) by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Gardener From Ochakov (opens in new tab) by Andrey Kurkov (Harvill Secker)
Autodrome (opens in new tab) by Kim Lakin-Smith (Snowbooks)
Ancillary Justice (opens in new tab) by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
Familiar (opens in new tab) by Robert J Lennon (Serpent’s Tail)
The Detainee (opens in new tab) by Peter Liney (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Best Of All Possible Worlds (opens in new tab) by Karen Lord (Jo Fletcher Books)
Age Of Voodoo (opens in new tab) by James Lovegrove (Solaris)
The Disestablishment Of Paradise (opens in new tab) by Philip Mann (Gollancz)
The Night Itself (opens in new tab) by Zoe Marriott (Walker Books)
We Are Here (opens in new tab) by Michael Marshall (Orion)
Evening’s Empires (opens in new tab) by Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
Starhawk (opens in new tab) by Jack McDevitt (Headline)
Planesrunner (opens in new tab) by Ian McDonald (Jo Fletcher Books)
Love Minus Eighty (opens in new tab) by Will McIntosh (Orbit)
Resonance (opens in new tab) by John Meaney (Gollancz)
The Fall (opens in new tab) by Claire Merle (Faber & Faber)
The Eidolon (opens in new tab) by Libby McGugan (Solaris)
The Man With The Compound Eyes (opens in new tab) by Wu Ming-Yi (Harvill Secker)
Hidden Among Us (opens in new tab) by Katie Moran (Walker Books)
The Curve Of The Earth (opens in new tab) by Simon Morden (Orbit)
Nexus (opens in new tab) by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)
More Than This (opens in new tab) by Patrick Ness (Walker Books)
Sufficiently Advanced Technology (opens in new tab) by Christopher Nuttall (Elsewhen Press)
A Tale For The Time Being (opens in new tab) by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
Reviver (opens in new tab) by Seth Patrick (Macmillan)
Red Moon (opens in new tab) by Benjamin Percy (Hodder & Stoughton)
Ack-Ack Macaque (opens in new tab) by Gareth L Powell (Solaris)
The Long War (opens in new tab) by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (Doubleday)
Fiddlehead (opens in new tab) by Cherie Priest (Tor)
The Adjacent (opens in new tab) by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)
Abyss (opens in new tab) by Tricia Rayburn (Faber & Faber)
On The Steel Breeze (opens in new tab) by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
Cooking With Bones (opens in new tab) by Jess Richards (Sceptre)
Shaman (opens in new tab) by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
Gemsigns (opens in new tab) by Stephanie Saulter (Jo Fletcher Books)
Limit (opens in new tab) by Franz Schätzing (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Bone Season (opens in new tab) by Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury)
Life On The Preservation (opens in new tab) by Jack C Skillingstead (Solaris)
Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (opens in new tab) by Robin Sloan (Atlantic Books)
The Age Of Scorpio (opens in new tab) by Gavin G Smith (Gollancz)
The Machine (opens in new tab) by James Smythe (Blue Door)
Arteess: Conflict (opens in new tab) by James Starling (Elsewhen Press)
Fiend (opens in new tab) by Peter Stenson (William Heinemann)
Neptune’s Brood (opens in new tab) by Charles Stross (Orbit)
Theatre Of The Gods (opens in new tab) by M Suddain (Jonathan Cape)
The City Of Devi (opens in new tab) by Manil Suri (Bloomsbury)
Osiris (opens in new tab) by EJ Swift (Del Rey)
Blood Donors (opens in new tab) by Steve Tasane (Walker Books)
Strange Bodies (opens in new tab) by Marcel Theroux (Faber & Faber)
The Violent Century (opens in new tab) by Lavie Tidhar (Hodder & Stoughton)
Your Brother’s Blood (opens in new tab) by David Towsey (Jo Fletcher Books)
Necessary Evil (opens in new tab) by Ian Tregillis (Orbit)
The Coldest War (opens in new tab) by Ian Tregillis (Orbit)
The Healer (opens in new tab) by Antti Tuomainen (Harvill Secker)
Ecko Burning (opens in new tab) by Danie Ware (Titan)
Shackleton’s Man Goes South by Tony White (The Science Museum)
The Ace Of Skulls (opens in new tab) by Chris Wooding (Gollancz)
You can visit the official site of the Arthur C Clarke Award for more information. Subscribe to SFX magazine (opens in new tab) – which one again supports the award as a media partner – for monthly book news, interviews and reviews. We’ll report on the shortlist and the winner here on the SFX website .
