CLARKE MATTERS

The lowdown on the contenders to win the prize for the best SF novel of the year

The shortlist for the 2018 Clarke Award has been announced. It’s a list that encompasses classic SF tropes and lit-fic – often in the same book. Unusually, six writers who have never made the shortlist are in contention, which helps to explain award director Tom Hunter’s bright optimism. “If we look at the quality of the books being submitted along with the increasing quantity, I’m very confident for the future of the award,” he says.

SEA OF RUST C robert Cargill (Gollancz)

The sea in question is a wasteland in a post-apocalyptic future. Yawn? No, because Cargill’s elegant twist is to craft a post-human Western featuring renegade robots as a way to explore questions around collectivism versus individualism.

Prediction Dark (robot) horse

DREAMS BEFORE THE START OF TIME Anne Charnock (47north)

Recent BSFA winner (for her short fiction) Charnock explores how family life and society may evolve in an era where parents don’t necessarily need to procreate in the old-fashioned way, but have choices. Prediction Good outside bet

AMERICAN WAR omar El Akkad (Picador)

It’s 2074 and US law has banned using fossil fuels. A second civil war ensues. The impressive debut from Egyptian-Canadian journalist El Akkad uses this “what-if?” moment as a jumping-off point to chart the making of a terrorist.

Prediction Outsider

SPACEMAN OF BOHEMIA Jaroslav Kalfar (Sceptre)

“Solaris with laughs,” noted The Guardian of a debut that tells the tale of the first Czech man in space. Czech émigré Kalfar may have left for the US when he was 15, but the subversive, absurdist spirit of Milan Kundera and the Prague spring runs through his novel. Prediction Not this time (famous last words…)

GATHER THE DAUGHTERS Jennie melamed (Tinder Press)

American writer Melamed is also a psychiatric nurse practitioner who works with traumatised children. It’s this experience that seems to inform her debut novel, set in a misogynist dystopia. Critics inevitably made comparisons with The Handmaid’s Tale, but this is vivid, serious and disquieting in its own right. Prediction An apposite choice in the #MeToo era?

BORNE Jeff Vandermeer (4th Estate)

A ruined city and a giant grizzly from which a biotech scavenger retrieves a sea anemone-shaped creature. Lush, wildly imaginative and shot through with ideas that most writers simply wouldn’t have the nerve to pursue, Big Beard VanderMeer’s prose calls to mind Mervyn Peake for its sheer fearlessness.

Prediction VanderMeer’s year? JWr

This year’s Arthur C Clarke Award will be announced on 18 July. www.clarkeaward.com