And the winner of the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award is …
Black Man by Richard Morgan
Congratulations to Richard Morgan; and of course, it’s an excellent book, which you should all go and read right now. Or, if you prefer, you could look at my photos from the award party and ceremony, over here. Paul Billinger has some here, including a good one of the judges.
I haven’t seen many reactions around yet, but Abigail Nussbaum is pleased. Jeff VanderMeer also thinks it’s a good choice, and has a short piece up at the Amazon blog. Instant Fanzine considers it “the least slapfightlicious choice.”
UPDATE: Paul Raven’s happy (but it’s the only one of the shortlist), Joe Gordon is chuffed, and Jonathan and James report they enjoyed attending the ceremony, and the Guardian implies that Richard Morgan is a genetically-modified assassin. (They also — mistakenly — give the impression that Paul Billinger was a voting judge; in fact the Chair’s role, which Paul carried out very well, is to moderate the discussion.)
Over on the Guardian blog, Sam Jordison reports on a night in the new world of SF. Two things strike me about this report: first, it’s great to hear that the passion involved in the decision was visible to an observer; second, I really regret not knowing that he was there, because I’d have liked to thank him for his continuing series of Guardian blog posts on past Hugo Award winners. I very much hope he gets a chance to post about his reaction to Black Man.
Elsewhere, Joe Abercombie is pleased the award went to an unashamedly sf novel, Philip Palmer enjoyed himself, and the post-presentation Gollancz meal seems to have gone well. (As for the tiny trousers mentioned in both posts, I can only assume that Adam Roberts has been supplying Lilliputian assistants to his fellow writers, and is now running a premium clothing-replacement business.)
Sci-Fi London have footage from the ceremony here, while the text of Paul Billinger’s speech can be found here. And io9’s take: “Shockingly, Science Fiction Book Wins SF Book Award”.
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For some reason, I had an intuition yesterday that it was going to be Black Man (which, of course, I didn’t tell anyone about before the result. I still think there are three novels on the shortlist that are better, but the differences are quite marginal, and I certainly wouldn’t say this result is a travesty. And I’ve only read the shortlist once – of all the shortlist, I can see Black Man gaining most from a second reading. It’s still too long, though.
Under a Clarke dictatorship Black Man would have been the winner, so I am pleased, and strangely more so because I didn’t think you were going to pick it.