This year’s 2012 Clarke Award Submissions (for the 2013 Arthur C Clarke Award) are now available in all their numerous glory at SFX. How numerous? The valiant, hard-reading five jury members read through 82 submitted books in order to filter them down to a shortlist of six, which will be announced on Thursday, April 4th.
There’s no contest this year, but guessing which six books from that long list will make the short list is still an interesting proposition, and SFX is requesting them.
The winning book will be announced on May 1st at the Royal Society, hopefully after a day’s Clarke Award symposium, “Write the Future”, for which there’s currently a Kickstarter going for fundraising. The fundraiser is already 3/4 of the way to its goal, with 25 days remaining, so there’s a very good chance indeed of this “new micro-conference on science, technology, communication and fiction” happening, also at the Royal Society.
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Kudos to SFX for the words “this is not a long-list” – that is too often forgotten.
I’d be astonished if Empty Space didn’t make the shortlist, but then I was astonished when The Islanders didn’t make the list last year. Apart from that, I’d guess 2312, Angelmaker, Boneshaker, Dark Eden and Wool.
Interesting guesses, Tony – though from my own reading of the first ‘book’, Wool has been drastically overhyped. For the judges’ picks, I’m going with Pure, Dark Eden, Intrusion, Jack Glass, 2312 and Alif the Unseen. My own preferred picks and additional thoughts are now live at my blog.