Clarke Awards - a deafening absence of controversy
Well, I’ve not actively been a part of the science fiction community for very long, but I’ve been around long enough to know that there’s usually a huge uproar of controversy and bitching after the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award is announced.
This year? Nothing. Nada. Silencio.
Does this mean everyone’s happy with the choice of M. John Harrison’s Nova Swing?* Or are the discontented just holding fire until they have some really ripe and fermented blog bile to launch?
[* You'll hear no complaints from me, that's for sure.]
License
This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales License.
May 10th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I reckon everyone’s happy. Not heard anyone say a bad thing about the book.
Mind you, wasn’t everyone happy last year too? (uncertain)
May 10th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I think (I hope) everyone is content with this year’s choice - even if folks didn’t ‘like’ Harrison’s novel, or would have chosen differently themselves, it does seem generally acknowledged that ‘Nova Swing’ was/is deserving. It’s an excellent novel, written by a great novelist, which is quite clearly sf. There’s very little not to agree with there except, I suppose, on grounds of subjective aesthetic opinion.
May 11th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Yeah, most people were pretty happy with Air. The previous three years all had some debate, though — Iron Council beating out River of Gods and Cloud Atlas; Quicksilver possibly not being sf at all (though that year was a weird shortlist); and The Separation beating Light.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Ooh, yeah, haven’t read Iron Council but River Of Gods is magnificent.