The UK’s Arthur C. Clarke Award have announced its six book finalists for 2016 — and the result is a combination of books you might not expect, and books you probably haven’t read yet.
Here’s the list of finalists:
- The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet — Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton)
- Europe at Midnight — Dave Hutchinson (Solaris)
- The Book of Phoenix — Nnedi Okorafor (Hodder & Stoughton)
- Arcadia — Iain Pears (Faber & Faber)
- Way Down Dark — J.P. Smythe (Hodder & Stoughton)
- Children of Time — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)
These were chosen out of a pool of 113 books. Award director Tom Hunter said:
This is a quintessentially Clarke Award kind of a shortlist. Look once and I’m sure everyone will see a choice they agree with. Look twice, and you’ll likely see a new book you want to read next. Look a third time though, and I hope you’ll see how well all of these six books sit together, and how they represent a particular special moment in time for UK science fiction. In other words, like all great books, this is a shortlist that rewards the more you read into it.
Top: Cover detail, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky