The winner of the 2009 Compton Crook Award is Paul Melko for his novel Singularity’s Ring. The award ceremony, which includes the presentation of a plaque and a $1000 check, will be during the opening ceremonies for Balticon 43 at 8PM on Friday 22 May.
The Compton Crook Award is presented by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society to “the best first novel of the year written by a single author in the field of science fiction, fantasy, or horror. The prize is named for the Towson State College Professor of Natural Science who wrote under the pseudonym Stephen Tall. Crook died in 1981.
This year’s nominees were listed in this article.
Singularity’s Ring is about what happens after ninety percent of humanity leaves Earth. “There is an artificial ring around the Earth and it is empty after the Singularity. Either all the millions of inhabitants are dead, or they have been transformed into energy beings beyond human perception. Earth’s population was reduced by ninety percent. Human civilization on Earth is now recovering from this trauma and even has a vigorous space program. Apollo Papadopulos is in training to become the captain of the starship Consensus. Apollo is a unique individual in that he/she/it is not an individual at all, but five separate teenagers who form a new entity. Strom, Meda, Quant, Manuel, and Moira are a pod, as these kinds of personalities are called, genetically engineered to work as one and to be able to communicate non-verbally. As a rare quintet, much relies on the successful training of Apollo, but as more accidents occur, the pod members struggle just to survive.”