China Town - Miéville wins the Arthur C. Clarke Awards
01/06/2001 . Source: Jessica Martin 

Time to catch up with all those award soirees we keep on getting invites for, but never seem to have time to go to.

First up is the famous Arthur C. Clarke Awards for the best science fiction novels of 2000.

First prize in the ACCs was claimed by a novel we haven't actually got around to reading yet, the oddly named Perdido Street Station, written by the even more improbably named China Miéville.

As well as a nice boost in sales - hell, we'll buy the book now seeing as the PR gonks in their publishers are obviously clueless enough to have missed us off the review copies list - China also gets a dosh prize of £2001 (ho ho).

Who from? Why the SF author who helped found the awards. That'll be Arthur C. Clarke, then.

Next year, this prize goes up to £2002. If they keep increasing it in a similar vein, by the year 2050, the prize money will - inflation adjusted - just about cover the cost of a Big Mac.

This prize is granted by a number of panelists chosen by luminaries from the British SF Foundation and the London Science Museum. Good job too. If we let the dirty unwashed public choose, we'd only get some frigging X-File TV tie-in book being voted through as the most popular work.

Other works which were nominated but didn't get first prize include the excellent Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, and the brilliant Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod. These we have read & totally recommend as fab books of the first order.

Two that got nominated which we didn't enjoy as much include Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Talents and Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History. Maybe it's a boy thing?

The award was bestowed on a grinning China Miéville at a ceremony held at the London Science Museum on May 19th. Old Clarkey even made a VR appearance at the ceremony from the warmth of his Sri Lanka palace.

Meanwhile, on the USA's fantasy front, the Mythopoeic Society has just composed its list of front runners in the Mythopoeic Awards race.

These include Win Blevins' 'RavenShadow', Midori Snyder's ' Innamorati', Charles de Lint's 'Forests of the Heart', and 'The Sarantine Mosaic' by Guy Gavriel Kay.

Perhaps we are now showing our age at The Nest, because we haven't read any of these no-doubt notable fantasy tomes - although we are spared total embarrassment by actually having heard of Guy Gavriel Kay and Charles de Lint.

Which is more than we can say for Win and Midori. Although we think the latter might have been a character in Babylon Five.