Clarke Awards

Adam Roberts has written a very informative review of the shortlist for this year’s Arthur C Clarke Award.

I haven’t read any of this year’s shortlist, and goodness knows I’ve got enough books to read, but even so Roberts has persuaded me that three of the shortlist deserve a spot on my Amazon wishlist.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history, a genre I’m not fond of. However, the premise of a world where the Black Death completely depopulated Europe, leaving China, India and Islam to shape the world, is fascinating, and the notion of his main characters encountering one another repeatedly across successive reincarnations over the centuries is somehow reminiscent of something Neil Gaiman might write. Which is a good thing, obviously. M John Harrison’s Light would appear to be the most “traditional” work of science fiction on this year’s list, a baroque space opera told with flair and imagination, but one with more rounded, human characters than you sometimes see in the new generation of space opera. In a year when there’s no sign of a Culture novel from Iain M Banks, that sounds like a must-read. Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark doesn’t sound promising on the face of it, but Roberts’ enthusiastic review persuaded me that Moon’s tale, which presents the story of a high-functioning autistic man who is neither a savant nor an innocent, is worth a shot.

The only trouble with reading so many reviews is that my bank balance can’t take the strain, especially when I’m going to be buying a new computer next month!

Oh well, that’s what credit cards are for…