Monthly Archives: March 2012

Interesting Links for 12-03-2012

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BSFA Award for Best Non-Fiction; my BSFA 2011 ballot

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I feel a bit uneasy about the BSFA Award for Best Non-Fiction, which asks us to choose between two blogs as a whole, one blog entry, one dynamic and evolving website, a book of essays and an exhibition catalogue. This really is comparing apples to oranges to mangoes. I particularly regret that it's not explicit that only the 2011 entries for the two blogs and the website are in contention; it makes it feel as if an entire set of entries over the lifetime of the site are being weighed against Abigail's thoughts on Engh. In a sense, that makes it much easier for me; although I very much like and appreciate both the SF MistressWorks blog and the Pornokitsch blog, and they richly deserve the greater exposure they have got by being nominated, I really don't think that they are suitable for this award and so I will not vote for them at all.

The SF Encyclopedia is in a different situation, to my mind; although like the two blog sites it is still evolving, it has in a sense been published in something resembling a complete form, to the point that I do feel comfortable in making a judgement about the importance of the whole enterprise. Maybe this is inconsistent of me, but hey, it's my vote. I think the relative importance is relevant as well; the SF Encyclopedia website will still be consulted when last year's entries on SF MistressWorks and Pornokitsch are showing up on the third or fourth page of Google searches (or whatever is used instead in 2017). So it gets not only a vote, but my top vote.

I didn't get to the British Library while the Out of this World exhibition was on, unfortunately, nor did I get hold of a copy of the catalogue which is nominated in this category. So that leaves my final two preferences between The Unsilent Library and Abigail Nussbaum's review of Arslan. The latter makes many excellent points about a book which she got much more out of than I did. But I'm still putting The Unsilent Library second, because I got a great deal out of it and also it was one of my own nominations in this category. (My other nomination, Elisabeth Sladen's autobiography, presumably put me in a minority of one among nominators.)

So, in case anyone cares, I have now finalised my entire ballot for the BSFA awards for 2011:

Best Novel
1) The Islanders by Christopher Priest
2) Embassytown by China Miéville
3) by Light Alone by Adam Roberts
4) Osama by Lavie Tidhar
5) Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith

Best Short Fiction (vote explained here)
1) "Of Dawn" by Al Robertson
2) "Covehithe" by China Mieville
3) The Copenhagen Interpretation by Paul Cornell
4) The Silver Wind by Nina Allan
5) Afterbirth by Kameron Hurley

Best Non-Fiction
1) The SF Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition ed. John Clute, Peter Nicholls, David Langford and Graham Sleight
2) The Unsilent Library: Essays on the Russell T. Davies Era of the New Doctor Who, ed. Graham Sleight, Tony Keen and Simon Bradshaw
3) Review of Arslan by M J Engh, Abigail Nussbaum
(no preference for the other three nominees)

Best Art (vote explained here)
1) Cover of Ian Whates’s The Noise Revealed by Dominic Harman
2) Cover of Liz Williams’s A Glass of Shadow by Anne Sudworth
3) Cover and illustrations of Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls by Jim Kay
4) Cover of Lavie Tidhar’s Osama by Pedro Marques

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Interesting Links for 11-03-2012

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Thoughts on Kony 2012

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I have been following the online storm about the Joseph Kony video with interest and some despair. I think even if I hadn't read up on it beforehand, the general tone of white saviours of African problems in the video would have put me off, along with the fact that furriners, who actually speak quite clearly, are subtitled and the little American kid, who I actually found difficult to understand, is not. My former colleague JP appears twice in it, looking as messianic as ever (and I chose that adjective very carefully).

Two crucial statements in the video made me sit up because of their barefaced untruthfulness.

"The problem is, 99% of the planet doesn't know who he is. If they knew, Kony would have been stopped years ago."

Actually, I doubt that Kony's lack of celebrity is really that big an issue. Those of us who work in conflict resolution have known all about him for a very long time (which is why some are a bit miffed that the rest of the world has suddenly picked up on what for us is very old news). The reasons that he has not "been stopped" have more to do with the very real political and military problems of tracking down a man who has armed followers and doesn't want to be found in some of the most difficult terrain on the planet. Local and regional actors have been trying to stop Kony for years; one can postulate a long list of reasons for their failure, but the fact that 99% of the planet doesn't know about him must be fairly low on that list. Raising consciousness, and white people building schools, may be part of the answer, but much more important is listening to and empowering local actors.

"The Ugandan military has to find him"

Well, no. Actually that's not strong enough. Hell, no! It's pretty well known that Kony is wandering in the bush between South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) and the central African Republic, not Uganda. Invisible Children are effectively asking their supporters to lobby the US government to support the Ugandan government to invade Uganda's neighbours. Quite apart from the fact that the last Ugandan invasion of the DRC was not a howling success (you didn't hear about that? see my former colleague Gérard's book), I think that the ramifications of this apparently simple policy statement may perhaps not have been thought through.

(It's a bit alarming that the first Ugandan politician interviewed, Santo Okot Lapolo, turns up on Google as someone who is himself accused of multiple human rights abuses, a fact that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere.)

I desperately hope that Kony is captured or killed soon, but let's remember that he has already been militarily defeated and has only a handful of remaining followers; and rather bizarrely the US policy objective of the Stop Kony video is not for policy innovation but to continue the status quo of the rather small (100 'advisers'!)  US military deployment in Uganda. Once Kony is out of the picture, will the Facebook generation pat itself on the back and allow Africa's problems to slip out of sight again?

This entry is locked because I do work in this field, and I have myself worked with African soldiers and politicians who have attempted both to negotiate with and to defeat Kony (though I should add that this was not why I was working with them myself). These are wily and intelligent individuals who have survived appalling personal circumstances and are now trying to build a new state out of the rubble of decades of external meddling. I don't think that this video will make their jobs any easier at all.

More links:

http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2012/03/joseph-kony-and-crowdsourced-intervention/
http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2012/03/invisible-childrens-military-disconnect/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/world/africa/online-joseph-kony-and-a-ugandan-conflict-soar-to-topic-no-1.html
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2012/03/08/unpacking-kony-2012/
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2012/03/08/teju-cole-on-american-sentimentality-towards-africa/
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/solving-war-crimes-with-wristbands-the-arrogance-of-kony-2012/254193/
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-soft-bigotry-of-kony-2012/254194/
http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/03/09/kony-video-social-media-manipulation-analysis/
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/10/opinion/kony-2012-video/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2012/03/09/why-i-think-the-kony-2012-campaign-is-wrong/
http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/
http://boingboing.net/2012/03/08/african-voices-respond-to-hype.html
http://www.wrongingrights.com/2012/03/the-definitive-kony-2012-drinking-game.html

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The Foe From The Future / The Valley Of Death

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Well, after thirty-five years, the magic has come back. The first run of Leela stories from The Face of Evil to Horror of Fang Rock is in some ways the peak of the Tom Baker era, possibly of the whole of Who, and I have been a bit disappointed that neither the spinoff novels set in this period nor the Big Finish Companion Chronicles featuring a dying Leela reminiscing about untold adventures have quite captured the Zeitgeist. But Big Finish have now pretty much pulled it off. The Fourth Doctor Lost Stories box set includes a six-parter by Robert Banks Stewart, adapted by John Dorney, and a four-parter by none other than Philip Hinchcliffe, adapted by Jonathan Morris – this is already a super package, with ten episodes and a CD of extra interviews with writers and cast.

Nothing is perfect, of course; The Foe From The Future has quite a complex time-travelling plot, with some of the questions raised in early episodes not really answered by the end, and some really rather gory and visceral moments; and like a lot of six-parters from the original show, it could perhaps have been trimmed a bit. The Valley of Death is much more satisfactory plot-wise – indeed, as a story, it is very well constructed – though it would clearly have been preferable as a Fourth Doctor / Sarah story (alas, no longer possible) and has some dodgy stereotyping of South American tribesmen.

Whatever the flaws, both of them are carried by the soaring performances of Tom Baker and Louise Jameson; several of the guest cast comment on just how infectious their energy was for the rest of the team during the recording process, and it shows. Baker is still occasionally silly, but nowhere near as portentous as he has been in the Paul Magrs BBC audios, and also able to effortlessly switch from clown to genius to alien wizard as required. Jameson has finally been given Who material that treats her as an equal rather than as a mere sidekick, and is utterly convincing. And the chemistry between them is clearly several magnitudes better than it was when they were on TV; both stories feature moments when the Doctor thinks Leela is dead or dying, and Baker rises convincingly to the occasion. (The guest cast are all good too, but really it’s the stars who I was listening for.)

I have got rather far behind with recent Big Finish releases due to changes of routine and reading and listening projects, but I am kicking myself for not getting to these stories (released in January) a bit earlier; though I think not as much as Tom Baker is kicking himself for not getting into the Big Finish studios when he was first invited. Very glad that he took the plunge and that BF found worthy material for him.

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March Books 2) The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

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Well, this is very entertaining! While The Princess Bride is at its core a rollicking fairy tale that does nothing at all to challenge racial or sexual stereotypes, what saves it is the witty and occasionally self-mocking tone of the text, the framing narrative of an author reclaiming a story he loved in childhood for his grandson, and also the sub-plot about the process of editing down and publishing a story written by another person in another time for another audience. I’m also impressed by the ambiguity of the ending (I understand that the film doesn’t dare to replicate that). So, despite its flaws, some of which are acknowledged in the text, strongly recommended.

Interesting Links for 08-03-2012

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March Books 1) Almost Perfect, by James Goss

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I may have mentioned once or twice that I think James Goss is one of the best writers of Who spinoff literature currently in business. Almost Perfect appears to have been his first book, a 2008. Torchwood novel set between Season 2 and Children of Earth, and while I liked it a lot it doesn’t quite reach the level of his later work. There is a sexy alien presence, which is classic Torchwood, and Ianto gets transformed into a beautiful woman for most of the novel, which is very entertaining; and there is a lot of really good writing about the Gwen/Rhys relationship, and about how much Owen and Toshiko are missed. But the book slightly misses the mark with regard to Jack’s characterisation and back-story, and the actual resolution seemed a bit incoherent – lots of fantastic imagery but lacking a decent frame. So, as Torchwood novels go, one of the decent ones; as James Goss novels go, it shows the way to future excellence.

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Interesting Links for 07-03-2012

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Interesting Links for 06-03-2012

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  • Trouble in Paradise

    The ex-President of the Maldives describes how he was removed from power last month. Dramatic stuff.
    (tags: coupsdetat )
  • Opportunity cost problem

    The Dylan-Clapton dilemma: “You won a free ticket to see an Eric Clapton concert (which has no resale value). Bob Dylan is performing on the same night and is your next-best alternative activity. Tickets to see Dylan cost $40. On any given day, you would be willing to pay up to $50 to see Dylan. Assume there are no other costs of seeing either performer. Based on this information, what is the opportunity cost of seeing Eric Clapton? A. $0 B. $10 C. $40 D. $50” – I got it wrong.
    (tags: mathematics )
  • Philip Madoc: A career in pictures

    Includes War Lord and Solon (but not Eelek, Fenner or Brockley)
    (tags: doctorwho death )
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The Scarifyers

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I did not immediately take to The Scarifyers, a series of audio plays starring Nicholas Courtney as retired police detective Lionheart and Terry Molloy as his sidekick, horror writer Professor Dunning, together solving 1930s X-Files type mysteries in London and elsewhere. Though the two stars are excellent, the first few scripts felt a bit thin and over-reliant on Doctor Who in-jokes. But once we get to the third or fourth story, things start to come together, and when Brian Blessed appears as a guest star in the fourth story, he fits in rather modestly and yet also memorably.

The sixth story was made after Nicholas Courtney died last year, and is rather poignantly about his character’s disappearance; his place is filled in the narrative by David Warner, playing his retired sergeant (Warner doesn’t really sound demotic enough for that part but otherwise is great as ever). By the end, the door is left open for more adventures with the Warner/Molloy combination, and that would not be a bad thing at all.

I don’t think I had come across the work of Simon Barnard or Paul Morris before, but I’ll look out for more by either.

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BSFA awards for Best Art

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I may not know much about Art, but I know what I like.

I found it actually quite easy to rank the four nominees for this year's BSFA award for Best Art.

4) Cover of Lavie Tidhar’s Osama by Pedro Marques – Not that I dislike it; I understand and like the concept, and it almost works. But the trail of smoke, while no doubt meant to suggest both the cigarette of the noir detective and the collapse of the Twin Towers, doesn’t quite manage the second; and the absence of any element suggesting the real Bin Laden’s trademark beard weakens it.

3) Cover and illustrations of Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls by Jim Kay – this may be a little unfair, but I’m not sure to what extent the art we see on the web page corresponds with the art nominated for the award. At one point I thought that it was just the cover, in which case it would have been a clear fourth-place vote. But obviously it includes the internal illustrations as well, which are indeed striking and grotesque. The third image, the monster sitting on a shed, is particularly impressive. In the end I just like the other two more.

2) Cover of Liz Williams’s A Glass of Shadow by Anne Sudworth – this is just beautiful, the cat particularly well caught, its eyes reflecting the bright small flowers around it, the countryside so vivid that you think you could step right into it and feel the midsummer evening glow.

1) Cover of Ian Whates’s The Noise Revealed by Dominic Harman – it may be a bit sad of me, but I like good old-fashioned spaceships sometimes, and here we have a cover that tells us what the story is about (probably); things going whizz and bang and vroom, and a couple of minuscule human figures standing back in awe. The weird and (presumably?) natural rock shapes of the landscape both clash with and complement the modernistic and (presumably?) artificial metal shapes of the base from which the rockets are emanating. It gets my vote.

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So, that first century manuscript of Mark’s gospel then

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In my links roundup for Friday I included this article describing the alleged finding of a first-century fragment of manuscript with text from the Gospel of St Mark. I don't remember how I came across it; my memory is that I followed a link to it from a summary found somewhere else (I originally thought Huffington Post but don't see it now). In any case, I wish I had been a bit more thorough; the link I chose is the Indian syndication of an American evangelical news service, and in general I prefer to link to primary material (which this is not) rather than journalistic coverage – particularly when as in this case, it is actually old news; my link was more than ten days after the 20 February news story, which itself reported an event held on 1 February.

I would have been better to link to this 20 February radio interview with the scholar at the centre of the controversy, Daniel Wallace, which gives some more details – though not really much more – of the find: this is a manuscript which came from Egypt somehow, and has so far been dated by one unidentified but apparently well-regarded palaeography expert to the first century.(The radio host makes the puzzling remark that "it can't be later than 51", which cannot be correct; Wallace does not either confirm or correct the remark.) Mutterings elsewhere indicate that it may (or may not) be part of the Green Collection, possibly a papyrus fragment from a late Egyptian mummy.

Tracking through internet discussion of this, I have become rather depressed by the poor quality of the debate between liberal and evangelical theologians. The evangelicals seem delighted by the idea that this discovery – if it is true – will push back the known fragments of manuscript to within the lifetime of the apostles, and may (or may not) indicate that the specific fragment of text on it has (or has not) remained unchanged since the earliest days. The liberals, on the other hand, have been mocking the evangelicals for a fake manuscript that isn't even the piece in question.

Myself, I've done a wee bit of New Testament Greek and scriptural analysis, and I've done a wee bit more palaeography and attempts to reconstruct original texts (of a much later date) from various manuscript versions, enough altogether to make me feel that both the evangelicals and the liberals who I've read on this particular topic seem to me to be approaching it with too many preconceptions. If we do have a genuine first century manuscript, that should be a cause for general celebration, full stop. Scholars will certainly continue to debate what it means and how significant it is, but a couple of verses of Mark's gospel in a fragment of a first-century manuscript can't and won't ever prove that the entire New Testament reached its present form by AD 70.

(Though at least none of the people I have read on this question are King James-ers.)

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The Ark on DVD

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I realised to my delight that I had not yet opened, let alone watched, a DVD of The Ark bought some time ago, and spent some time over the weekend remedying the situation. As the First Doctor space opera stories go, this is one of the few successful ones without Daleks; and I’ve always appreciated it as Dodo’s first proper appearance. The DVD is solid rather than brilliant, though the story behind the insanely complex camera work is told very well, and I had not appreciated just how short the time between filming and broadcast was; though the claim that Dodo’s miniskirt seen at the end was the first ever shown on the BBC seems rather bold. The extras include a lovely reminiscence of the Riverside studio where the story was made, with Peter Purves and the director Michael Imison (who was told he was to be sacked literally as he went into the gallery to supervise filming of the final episode), and a rather silly pieceon why the Monoids never took off (which at least gets Jacueline Rayner a moment as a talking head).

And there’s also a short documentary on the influence of H.G. Wells on Doctor Who, which seems at first an odd inclusion, though the argument is in the end very convincingly made that The Ark is one of the most Wellsian stories in the Whovian canon. This features a lot of Matthew Sweet, who has written some of the more literary Big Finish audios, and also Kim Newman, Graham Sleight and a mysterious figure credited as Dr A Keen, who looks like someone I vaguely remember from the Belfast arts faculty computer facilities in the early 1990s; I wonder what he is doing now?

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Charles Burns exhibition in Leuven

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I had tried twice over the Christmas holidays to get to the Charles Burns exhibition at the M Museum in Leuven, stymied both times by finding it closed. Yesterday I realised that it only runs until next weekend, so I rushed into town to catch it before it was too late. The only work of Burns’ that I had actually read was the acclaimed Black Hole, but that was enough to make me want more.

Well, I was very satisfied. There are only in fact three rooms featuring Burns’ work, and only one of those is a normal museum exhibition room, featuring original artwork for Black Hole, and for Burns’ other strips such as El Borbah, Big Baby and Dog Boy, few of which I knew much about but all seemed to tie into his obsessions with adoescence, the boundaries between humanity and animals or machines, and putting everything into stark black and white images. (Often when we say ‘black and white’ we mean ‘grayscale’, but not in Burns’ case.)

The main exhibition room is dominated by a mural drawn by Burns specially for Leuven. I was a bit surprised that a lot of the other visitors appeared to be going clockwise round the cases, which is of course useless if you are trying to follow a story from start to finish. I was also surprised by the young age of some of the visitors – not all of Burns’ work is really suitable for children, and some is pretty graphic (in an ugh! way rather than a sexy way). I guess if you are in the habit of taking the kids to a modern art exhibition at the weekend you take it in your stride.

What I had not reallised at all was that there are a number of Belgian links to Burns’ career, which perhaps explains why the exhibition is taking place in Leuven. The middle and smallest of the exhibition rooms shows a documentary film about Burns’ work as a designer of The Hard Nut, a much scarier version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, which was premiered at La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels in 1991. Burns is also a contributor to a French film called Peur(s) du Noir (France not being that far from Belgium), and indeed his segment was on continuous play in the third exhibition room. And he takes a particular interest in Hergé’s Tintin work to the extent that the cover of his newest book, X’ed Out, is a pretty obvious homage to The Shooting Star.

I thought this showed an imaginative use of the museum’s space, with two of the three rooms dominated by dynamic exhibits (some other Burns material fills the space behind the screen where the segment from Peur(s) du Noir is being shown; this includes the OK Cola cans and marketing and the famous “Somebody’s Watching” Time cover from 1991 – especially appropriate for me since it was Time that put me onto Burns in the first place). Well worth an afternoon out and if any you you are with reach of Leuven in the remaining week of this exhibition I strongly recommend it.

I took the time to wander through the other three temporary exhibitions in the museum. None of them grabbed me in the same way as Burns; Patrick Van Caeckenbergh has made some odd sculptures from everyday objects (the nearly headless penguin is the one that sticks in my mind); Wannes Goetschalcks has filmed himself doing things in a box, which is great if you like films about people doing things on their own in boxes; and Christoph Fink has put on display his own personal and frankly incomprehensible notation of journeys he has made, apparently to honour the great geographer Mercator (he of the projection) who was born in 1512 and did some of his early work in Leuven.

I will follow up a bit on Mercator; the library at the Arenberg campus of Leuven university is staging an exhibition about him starting later this month, and Prince Philippe and Pricess Mathilda are making an appearance at a ceremony at his birthplace today (the actual anniversary appears to be tomorrow). I might even struggle up to Sint-Niklaas, though the Mercator museum there seems with exquisite timing to have closed the main exhibit for renovations, while attempting to tempt the visitor with temporary exhibitions. Well, it’s not that far away.

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February Books 20) Embassytown, by China Miéville

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I found this, the last in my reading of the BSFA novel nominations, a fascinating read. Embassytown is an interface between humans and several different types of aliens; the human ambassadors who deal with them are identical twins, bred and conditioned to function as effectively a single personality with two bodies; this alone is a fantastic sfnal concept which has never quite been done like this. Lots of playing around with and about language, the meaning of humanity, and some sex as well; also we have the inevitable Miévillean revolution and subsequent battle against the forces of reaction (very weirdly and vividly conceived).

I’m sorry to say, therefore, that I actually didn’t like it as much as The Islanders. I found the characters more baffling than engaging, and felt that while the setting was superbly realised, this was not as true of the story. My vote for Best Novel therefore goes to the many strands (in more than one sense) of Christopher Priest’s The Islanders, followed by Embassytown, Adam Roberts’ by Light Alone, Lavie Tidhar’s Osama and Kim Lakin-Smith’s Cyber Circus, in that order.

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Interesting Links for 03-03-2012

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Interesting Links for 02-03-2012

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Clarke Award shortlist – my guess

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The list of 60 novels submitted for this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award has been published, and we are invited to guess what the final shortlist of six will be.

As I've been doing with other awards recently, I've crunched out the numbers on members of both Goodreads and Librarything who have each book, and come up with the following table ranked roughly in order of popularity taken across the two sites, including also ratings (NB that the Goodreads figure is not for those who own the book but for those who have bothered to rank it; the Librarything ratings may reflect only a few of those who claim to own the book). That gives me the following table for the 60 submissions:

Goodreads Librarything
number average number average
11.22.63, Stephen King 18332 4.29 1605 4.32
Blackout, Connie Willis 3602 3.83 1163 3.88
Reamde, NealStephenson 4893 3.91 865 3.93
Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor 11201 4.17 646 4.35
Embassytown, China Miéville 2539 3.86 787 3.96
The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan 3115 3.45 427 3.88
All Clear, Connie Willis 2501 4.09 727 4.07
Zone One, Colson Whitehead 2220 3.32 313 3.55
Rule 34, Charles Stross 1087 3.57 335 3.76
Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey 1389 4.03 196 4.01
Hull Zero Three, Greg Bear 791 3.22 292 3.32
The End Specialist (The Post-Mortal), Drew Magary 927 3.83 158 3.63
Wonder, RobertJ. Sawyer 574 3.86 152 3.6
The Fallen Blade, Jon Courtenay Grimwood 281 3.11 110 3.36
Mr Fox, HelenOyeyemi 436 3.49 87 3.22
Dust, JoanFrances Turner 363 3.13 96 3.13
The Last Four Things, Paul Hoffman 476 3.34 72 3.53
Equations of Life, Simon Morden 230 3.79 78 4
The Testament ofJessie Lamb, Jane Rogers 128 2.95 81 3.17
The Waters Rising, Sherri S. Tepper 163 3.47 70 3.25
Embedded, DanAbnett 195 3.64 61 3.81
The Straight Razor Cure (Low Town), Daniel Polansky 270 3.82 53 3.54
The Demi Monde: Winter, Rod Rees 122 3.61 66 4
The Clockwork Rocket, Greg Egan 121 3.4 66 3.65
The Age of Odin, James Lovegrove 139 3.58 55 3.5
Heaven's Shadow, David S. Goyer & Michael Cassutt 159 3.53 41 3.56
Down to the Bone, Justina Robson 78 3.79 59 3.73
Son of Heaven, David Wingrove 110 3.58 45 3.39
Germline, T.C.McCarthy 100 3.71 52 3.38
Echo City, Tim Lebbon 87 3.34 43 3.25
The Iron Jackal, Chris Wooding 97 4.43 30 4.41
Shift, Tim Kring and Dale Peck 77 3.19 44 3.2
The Islanders, Christopher Priest 37 4.14 30 3.75
by Light Alone, Adam Roberts 37 3.62 27 3.69
The Departure, Neal Asher 58 3.41 23 3
The Kings of Eternity, Eric Brown 48 3.94 24 3.25
The Noise Revealed, Ian Whates 20 3.55 26 2.5
Final Days, Gary Gibson 34 3.71 20 3.17
Gods of Manhattan, Al Ewing 23 3.91 21 4
Dead of Veridon, Tim Akers 16 3.81 25 4
Hell Ship, Philip Palmer 31 3.74 13 2.25
The Recollection, Gareth L. Powell 27 3.3 15 3
War in Heaven, Gavin Smith 23 3.7 10 –
Osama, LavieTidhar 11 4.18 17 3.6
The Great Lover, Michael Cisco 10 4.1 16 5
The Godless Boys, Naomi Wood 19 3.63 6 4
Regicide, Nicholas Royle 10 3.5 9 3
Bronze Summer, Stephen Baxter 5 4.2 10 2
Cyber Circus, Kim Lakin-Smith 9 4.33 9 3.25
The Shadow of the Soul, Sarah Pinborough 11 4.45 3 –
Wake Up and Dream, Ian R. MacLeod 5 3.6 7 –
Novahead, Steve Aylett 9 3.78 5 3.5
Sequence, Adrian Dawson 15 3.87 1 –
Dead Water, Simon Ings 11 2.27 2 –
Savage City, Sophia McDougall 5 4.2 5 –
Bringer of Light, Jaine Fenn 4 4.5 6 3.75
Nemonymous Night, D.F. Lewis 1 3 5 5
Here Comes The Nice, Jeremy Reed 1 5 5 –
The Ironclad Prophecy, Pat Kelleher 2 4 3 –
Random Walk, Alexandra Claire 0 – 1 –


It may reasonably argued that this doesn't tell us very much; that a juried award cannot be expected to mirror the tastes of the wider public, and that the members of Goodreads and Librarything are quite possibly not looking for the same things in a book as the Clarke Award judges. Indeed, four of the five BSFA nominees for Best Novel are in the lower half of the table. However, I think we can be fairly sure about eliminating at least the bottom few books; if they have failed to catch the attention of the world at large, they will probably also have failed to catch the imagination of the judges. (Though I am tempted to seek out Alexandra Claire's Random Walk, just for curiosity.)

However, the fact is that I have almost nothing else to go on; since the only books I have read on the list are the BSFA nominees (and the two by Connie Willis), I may as well guess at the Clarke shortlist using the information above. The top six books are 11.22.63, Blackout, Reamde, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Embassytown and The Last Werewolf. However, the rules specify that the award is for science fiction, which (as far as I can tell) rules out 11.22.63, Daughter of Smoke and Bone and The Last Werewolf. (Interestingly, these are also the three books on the list with the highest ratio of Goodreads users to Librarything users.) I think that Blackout is also ruled out as it is only half a novel. That's four of my top six eliminated; the next four are All Clear, Zone One, Rule 34, and Leviathan Wakes. All Clear is eliminated for the same reason as Blackout, and next up is Hull Zero Three. So that gives me six.

But… the average Goodreads rankings for Zone One and Hull Zero Three are not in fact very impressive – both are in the bottom ten of the entire list. Again, the Clarke judges will have different tastes to Goodreads readers; but that much different? Strike the two of them as well. That takes me to The End Specialist (aka The Post-Mortal) and Wonder, both of which appear to be science fiction.

Hang on, I'm not finished. Leviathan Wakes has a suspiciously high ratio of Goodreads users to Librarything users, which makes me suspect that it may have more populist than hardcore appeal (as with 11.22.63, Daughter of Smoke and Bone and The Last Werewolf). Also, despite Wonder's comparatively good ratings on both sites, I can't actually comprehend how anyone likes Sawyer's writing. So I'm dropping those two as well. But the next four books on the list, The Fallen Blade, Mr Fox, Dust and The Last Four Things appear not to be science fiction either. So my last two are Equations of Life and The Testament of Jessie Lamb.

I don't know much about any of these books, but this is only a parlour game anyway, and knowing that it is unlikely to be correct, I therefore predict that the books on the Clarke shortlist will be Reamde, Embassytown, Rule 34, The End Specialist, Equations of Life and The Testament of Jessie Lamb. If I am lucky I'll get one or two of them right.

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