More or less one hundred books, maybe a couple more, which is a bit down on previous years but higher than a decade ago. How many books were considered for the 2022 science fiction prize? Most years the judges plead for seven books, but we keep it fixed at a half dozen. Then we have a last meeting to decide the winner. The judges-this year Phoenix Alexander, Kris Black, Nicole Devarenne, Stark Holborn and Nick Hubble-get sent all the books, which they are expected to read and assess, and we have various meetings to whittle these down to a shortlist of six. “The history of genre science fiction is dominated by straight white men” It comes down to the tastes of those five judges in the room. On the other hand, some commentators are unhappy that more experimental books have been overlooked in favour of more ‘core’ science fiction. The award has often gone to a left field title-most notoriously when Marge Piercy’s Body of Glass won out over Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars. The first award, in 1987, went to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and caused a bit of a kerfuffle because she said she didn’t write science fiction. Later we hooked up with Sci-Fi London for a fifth-an odd number makes a deadlock less likely. Initially, two judges each were supplied every year by the British Science Fiction Association, the Science Fiction Foundation, and the International Science Policy Foundation-which no longer exists. When it was obvious that Arthur’s UK holding company, Rocket Publications, could no longer fund the award, a group of us set up the Serendip Foundation to save the award. This was later raised to £2001 and has gone up a pound each year. I’ve heard stories that he wanted to start a science fiction magazine-there was one named for his rival Isaac Asimov-but instead an award was suggested, with an annual prize of £1000. Clarke, who wanted to put money back into British sci fi. The prize was set up in the mid-1980s with a donation from Arthur C. To start us off, for anyone who has missed our previous years’ coverage, could you tell me a bit about the prize and how the judging process works? We find the books highlighted by the Clarke Award are always very popular with our readers. Clarke Award for the best science fiction books of 2022. Thank you for joining us to discuss the shortlist for the Arthur C. Foreign Policy & International Relations.
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