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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 by Brian W Aldiss (The Friday Project)
iD by Madeline Ashby (Angry Robot)
Jupiter War by Neal Asher (Tor)
Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood (Bloomsbury)
The Beautiful Land by Alan Averill (Titan)
Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Bach (Orbit)
The Gods Of Atlantis by Alan K Baker (Snowbooks)
Dream London by Tony Ballantyne (Solaris)
Gideon Smith And The Mechanical Girl by David Barnett (Snowbooks)
Lexicon by Max Berry (Mulholland Books)
Proxima by Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
The Beauty Of Murder by AK Benedict (Orion)
Terra by Mitch Benn (Gollancz)
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (HarperCollins)
Without Warning by John Birmingham (Titan)
The Aylesford Skull by James P Blaylock (Titan)
What Lot's Wife Saw by Ionna Bourazopoulou (Black & White Publishing)
Tourmaline by James Brogden (Snowbooks)
Bedlam by Christopher Brookmyre (Orbit)
The Serene Invasion by Eric Brown (Solaris)
Arctic Rising by Tobias S Buckell (Del Rey)
The Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier by Jack Campbell (Titan)
Dreams And Shadows by Robert C Cargill (Gollancz)
The Bone Dragon by Alexia Casale (Faber & Faber)
The Lives Of Tao by Wesley Chu (Angry Robot)
The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke (Angry Robot)
Conquest by John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard (Headline)
Abaddon's Gate by James A Corey (Orbit)
The Secret Knowledge by Andrew Crumey (Dedalus)
Homeland by Cory Doctorow (Titan)
Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow (Titan)
The Rapture Of The Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross (Titan)
The Arrows of Time by Greg Egan (Gollancz)
The Circle by Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton)
Fearsome Dreamer by Laure Eve (Hot Key Books)
The Fictional Man by Al Ewing (Solaris)
Queen Of Nowhere by Jaine Fenn (Gollancz)
Seoul Survivors by Naomi Foyle (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Stranger's Shadow by Max Frei (Gollancz)
Convergence by Mike French (Elsewhen Press)
The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman (Headline)
Marauder by Gary Gibson (Tor)
The Falling Sky by Pippa Goldschmidt (Freight)
Ectopia by Martin Goodman (Barbican Press)
Parasite by Mira Grant (Orbit)
2121 by Susan Greenfield (Head of Zeus)
Shopocalypse by David Gullen (Clarion)
The Humans by Matt Haig (Canongate)
Crash by Guy Haley (Solaris)
Stray by Monica Hesse (Hot Key Books)
Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins (Gollancz)
The Folded Man by Matt Hill (Sandstone Press)
The Secret Of Abu el Yezdi by Mark Hodder (Del Rey)
A History Of The Future In 100 Objects by Adrian Hon (Skyhook)
The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough (Titan)
Dust by Hugh Howey (Century)
Valour's Choice by Tanya Huff (Titan)
Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human (Century)
God's War by Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)
Phoenicia's Worlds Benjamin Jeapes (Solaris)
Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen (Snowbooks)
The Clone Rebellion: The Clone Republic Stephen L. Kent (Titan)
The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan (John Murray Press)
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Gardener From Ochakov by Andrey Kurkov (Harvill Secker)
Autodrome by Kim Lakin-Smith (Snowbooks)
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
Familiar by Robert J Lennon (Serpent's Tail)
The Detainee by Peter Liney (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Best Of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord (Jo Fletcher Books)
Age Of Voodoo by James Lovegrove (Solaris)
The Disestablishment Of Paradise by Philip Mann (Gollancz)
The Night Itself by Zoe Marriott (Walker Books)
We Are Here by Michael Marshall (Orion)
Evening's Empires by Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
Starhawk by Jack McDevitt (Headline)
Planesrunner by Ian McDonald (Jo Fletcher Books)
Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh (Orbit)
Resonance by John Meaney (Gollancz)
The Fall by Claire Merle (Faber & Faber)
The Eidolon by Libby McGugan (Solaris)
The Man With The Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi (Harvill Secker)
Hidden Among Us by Katie Moran (Walker Books)
The Curve Of The Earth by Simon Morden (Orbit)
Nexus by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)
More Than This by Patrick Ness (Walker Books)
Sufficiently Advanced Technology by Christopher Nuttall (Elsewhen Press)
A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
Reviver by Seth Patrick (Macmillan)
Red Moon by Benjamin Percy (Hodder & Stoughton)
Ack-Ack Macaque by Gareth L Powell (Solaris)
The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (Doubleday)
Fiddlehead by Cherie Priest (Tor)
The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)
Abyss by Tricia Rayburn (Faber & Faber)
On The Steel Breeze by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
Cooking With Bones by Jess Richards (Sceptre)
Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter (Jo Fletcher Books)
Limit by Franz Schätzing (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury)
Life On The Preservation by Jack C Skillingstead (Solaris)
Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan (Atlantic Books)
The Age Of Scorpio by Gavin G Smith (Gollancz)
The Machine by James Smythe (Blue Door)
Arteess: Conflict by James Starling (Elsewhen Press)
Fiend by Peter Stenson (William Heinemann)
Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross (Orbit)
Theatre Of The Gods by M Suddain (Jonathan Cape)
The City Of Devi by Manil Suri (Bloomsbury)
Osiris by EJ Swift (Del Rey)
Blood Donors by Steve Tasane (Walker Books)
Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux (Faber & Faber)
The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar (Hodder & Stoughton)
Your Brother's Blood by David Towsey (Jo Fletcher Books)
Necessary Evil by Ian Tregillis (Orbit)
The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis (Orbit)
The Healer by Antti Tuomainen (Harvill Secker)
Ecko Burning by Danie Ware (Titan)
Shackleton's Man Goes South by Tony White (The Science Museum)
The Ace Of Skulls by Chris Wooding (Gollancz)
You can visit the official site of the Arthur C Clarke Award for more information. Subscribe to SFX magazine - 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 .
