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Who will arrange my Separation from this troublesome Priest?
Christopher Priest scoops the 2003 Arthur C Clarke Award for his
novel 'The Separation', featuring a parallel reality where Britain
made peace with Hitler in 1941. Pulp SF it ain't ... but it's a rather
good read all the same.
 Well,
the votes are in and the announcement has now been made that the
2003 Arthur C Clarke Award has been presented to Christopher Priest
for his novel The Separation.
The award is given to the best science fiction novel receiving
its first British publication in 2002.
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| From left to right: Liz Sourbut, Paul McAuley,
Paul Kincaid, Tony Cullen, Iain Emsley and Fred Clarke. |
Competition for this year's award was particularly strong, and
all the novels on the shortlist include:
KIL'N PEOPLE
by David Brin
LIGHT
by M. John Harrison
THE SCAR
by China Miéville
SPEED OF DARK
by Elizabeth Moon
THE SEPARATION
by Christopher Priest
THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Harrison, Miéville, Moon and Priest were all at the ceremony
at the Science Museum, London, on Saturday 17th May, among with
some 200 guests including former Clarke Award winners and shortlisted
authors such as Paul McAuley, Pat Cadigan, Geoff Ryman, Adam Roberts,
James Lovegrove, Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Josephine Saxton.
The judges for this year's award were:
Tony Cullen and Iain Emsley for the BSFA; Paul McAuley and Liz
Sourbut for the Science Fiction Foundation, and Doug Millard for
the Science Museum.
Submissions are now being invited for the 2004 Arthur C Clarke
Award, where the judges will be: Iain Emsley and Carol Ann Kerry-Green
for the BSFA, Mark Bould and Geoff Ryman for the Science Fiction
Foundation, and Dave Palmer for the Science Museum.
We took a vote here at the 'Nest, and we reckon China Miéville's
'The Scar' was the best novel on the list by far - but it fell too
far into the fantasy camp to get to first base (or arguably to have
been included in the first place).
The Separation - by many fan's definition - barely scrapes in as
SF though. It's really a literary novel with a slight parallel reality
twist - a world where the UK and Germany signed a peace treaty in
1941.
While a peace in this year wasn't impossible, the armistice includes
relocating all the jews from German-occupied Europe to Madagascar
where they can live peacefully in a proto-Israel state.
Given Hitler's attitude towards the jews, this reads like a bit
of a kludge; kind of an unlikely tidy up to answer the obvious question:
"oh, but if there was an honorable peace between the UK and
Germany, what would have happened to all the jews and the left wingers
and the gays?"
The horrifying answer in Robert Harris's Fatherland, where
the ex-U-boat commander turned policeman stumbles across broken
skulls in a forest in a 1960s and throws up as he realizes what
happened in his Nazi-ruled continent is probably a counterfactual
slightly truer to the timeline, methinks.
The Separation is a story about two twins in world war two,
one a pacifist, the other a pilot, and the main theme seems to be
about the unreliability of memory looking back.
It's very well written, mind, and makes lots of plays about what
might or might not be real, wheeling out a roster of doubles, impostors
and mistaken identity for the twins, all cloaking the plot with
the weary mist of illusion.
All in all, a very British science fiction novel for a peculiarly
British science fiction award.
Jessica
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OTHER CONTENT - June 2003
Going to Jael
At last, the queen of SFF illustration, Jael, comes under the interviewer's spotlight. She explains how she put her personal and inner ambition on hold through most of her extremely busy child-rearing years, and why she just loves Batman, Green Hornet, Captain Marvel and Superman.
(INTERVIEWS)
An Allen Key for Science Fiction?
Why philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen has announced plans for a new cultural project dedicated to science fiction and the ways it captures our imagination.
(NEWS)
Adamantium or cement? Shall I count the ways for the Hugo.
The World SF con - Noreascon Four - would like your creative insights and otherworldly
engineering proposals for the perfect base on which to mount their treasured
silver rocket denoting excellence in SFF ... the Hugo awards. How about moon
rock, guys?
(NEWS)
Who will arrange my Separation from this troublesome Priest?
Christopher Priest scoops the 2003 Arthur C Clarke Award for his novel 'The Separation', featuring a parallel reality where Britain made peace with Hitler in 1941. Pulp SF it ain't ... but it's a rather good read all the same.
(NEWS)
A little Huth and Puff
Interview with the author Joe Huth - co-editor of the non-fiction work the 'Knight Rider Legacy'. Joe talks about why, with society's ongoing love affair with the automobile, you can make that car indestructible, sentient and able to perform incredible feats and you've got every young boy's (and many man's) dream.
(AUTHOR INTERVIEWS)
The Offworld Report: May 2003
Jeff VanderMeer looks at Robert Freeman Wexler, just about everyone looks at The Matrix Reloaded, the Andromeda season three finale slaps into the small screen, Ted Chiang is interviewed, and President Bush cites the film 'The Last Starfighter' as his inspiration for entering politics (or does he?).
(NEW ROUNDUP)
Riverworld: The TV Series
A frank appraisal of the TV series of the Riverworld by Shelby Peck, who finds
a hodge-podge of things that can and can't be found in the books.
(TV REVIEWS)
The Matrix Reloaded: Frank's Take
Frank finds the whimsical Wachowski tandem are at it again with the second installment of this frothy film series in the form of the visually vigorous and devoutly exhilarating The Matrix Reloaded.
(FILM REVIEWS)
The Matrix Reloaded: Mark's Take
The war to release humanity from computer-generated non-reality continues in a pretentious and violent film that nonetheless has a lot of style.
(FILM REVIEWS)
More Priestly Mischief
Is there no stopping the man? The winners of the British Science Fiction Association Awards were announced on Easter Sunday, at he 54th UK National Science Fiction Convention. The Winner for Best Novel of 2002? None other than Christopher Priest for his 'The Separation', published by Scribner.
(NEWS)
Canamar (Star Trek Enterprise)
Archer and Trip, falsely accused of smuggling, find themselves on an Enolian prison ship headed for the dreaded penal colony of Canamar.
(TV REVIEWS)
Future Tense (Star Trek Enterprise)
The discovery of a wrecked ship, apparently from the future, thrusts Archer and the Enterprise right in the middle of the Temporal Cold War.
(TV REVIEWS)
Horizon (Star Trek Enterprise)
Travis Mayweather returns home to his parents' ship, the Horizon, only to find that things have changed in his absence.
(TV REVIEWS)
Judgment
(Star Trek Enterprise)
Archer is accused of crimes against the Klingon Empire and brought before a tribunal.
(TV REVIEWS)
X2: Frank's Thoughts
Is everybody ready for a second helping of a particular mutant recipe known as the X-Men? Apparently so since the first taste of this action-packed delicacy mustered up an incredible $157 million at the U.S. box office.
(FILM REVIEWS)
X2: Mark's Thoughts
This second film based on the X-Men comic book is a better story and a more atmospheric production. I am told it is a better adaptation of the comic book. One does not come to this sort of film for a deep statement of the human condition, but for a summer action film, it is not too bad.
(FILM REVIEWS)
2001 and All That
Scottish SF author Ken MacLeod argues that much history, including the End of
it, has happened since 2001, and he thinks it is rather important that they should not
be remembered.
(COMMENT)
Why Some Things Don't Need To Be Resurrected
Geoff asks can, indeed should, Battlestar Galactica be revived in the same way Star Trek was resurrected with the Next Generation?
(COMMENT)
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