In case you’ve not seen it already, the shortlist for the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award is out in the wild. The six titles that made the cut this year:
- Zoo City – Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)
- The Dervish House – Ian McDonald (Gollancz)
- Monsters of Men – Patrick Ness (Walker Books)
- Generosity – Richard Powers (Atlantic Books)
- Declare – Tim Powers (Corvus)
- Lightborn – Tricia Sullivan (Orbit)
A pleasingly diverse selection, with a few of the inevitable surprises. I’ve only read one and a half of them, as it happens (I got halfway through Lightborn before being distracted by other priorities, though I do intend to return to it), but I read more of the complete list of submitted titles than usual this year.
Anyone care to call which way they think it’ll go?
Would it be hard to make the list items link to their Amazon pages?
No harder than copy-pasting them into a search box, I guess!
I’ve read three of these and have two more on the shelves. I’d say that ‘Declare’ is probably out purely due to age; I also think it’s nothing like Power’s best novel and it was the one I was most surprised to see there.
While it’s nice to see ‘Monsters of Men’ on the list it’s not the strongest in the series (I don’t really feel I can comment on the absence of the other titles given I was on the jury those two years!)
If I were a betting man, I’d say that the smart money would be on ‘The Dervish House’ (although I’ve not read it myself yet) as much as anything to make up for the inexplicable omission of ‘Brasyl’ in an earlier year.
But who can say? I know from personal experience that these things never go as you might expect!