The 2008 Arthur C. Clarke Award—including the £2008 prize—will be handed out on 30 April as part of the Sci-Fi-London Film Festival.
The short-listed books for this year’s award are:
The Red Men by Matthew de Abaitua (published by Snow Books)
The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter (Faber & Faber)
The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall (Canongate)
The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
Black Man by Richard Morgan (Gollancz)
The annual award is “presented for the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected from a shortlist of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year.” It was originally established by a grant from Sir Arthur C. Clarke with the aim of promoting science fiction in Britain, and is currently administered by the Serendip Foundation with Sir Arthur continuing to donate a cash prize via Rocket Publishing, his UK representatives.
The winner is judged by a jury panel and selected from an initial shortlist of six eligible novels. The panel of judges is made up of a voluntary body of distinguished writers, critics, and fans with the panel line-up changing every year. This year’s judges are: Niall Harrison and Claire Weaver for the British Science Fiction Association, Pat Cadigan and Francis Spufford for the Science Fiction Foundation and Pauline Clarke for the science fiction news website SF Crowsnest.com. Paul Billinger represents the Arthur C. Clarke Award as the Chair of Judges.