China Miéville has won this year’s Arthur C Clarke Award in a ceremony held in a luxury central London cinema, for his novel The City and the City. I was at the ceremony and it was packed with the great and the good of the genre (the not so good too, if you include me).

I'm currently compiling a list of questions from the dozens I solicited from you, dear readers, for our upcoming interview with China (just as soon as I work out how 21st century instant messaging works... China's preferred means of online interviewing).

In The City and the City, Inspector Tyador Borlú, of the Extreme Crime Squad in the European city-state of Beszel, gets to grip with a terrible murder.



He quickly comes to realise that the victim had been involved in the political and cultural turmoil involving Beszel and its twin city of Ul Qoma.

In April 2010, the novel was also named a 2010 Hugo Award nominee in the Best Novel category. In the same month, it won the BSFA Award for Best Novel of 2009.

Well done, China. Another deserved win for you.

Anyway, here's some pictures from the 2010 Clarke Awards.





If you want to congratulate China in person, myself and Mr Miéville will be signing books together – I’ll be signing my books, he’ll be signing his, of course – along with a host of other famous fantasy and science fiction authors at the SFX Summer of Reading festival which is kicking off at Waterstone’s London Piccadilly Circus mega-store on Monday 10th May 2010.

See http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/articles/news/2010/Summer-of-Science-Fiction-Reading-14781.php for more details.

A full report will be forthcoming from myself on the event at the HarperCollins Voyager blog shortly.

Stephen Hunt