Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

2014 Arthur C. Clarke Award Splits Submitted Authors by Gender


Last year, the Arthur C Clarke award panel was widely criticized for having no women authors on the short list. So, this year, they've created a separate, all-female shortlist submission list.

The Clarke award website is currently down, probably because everybody wants to see the same list of 33 eligible books by women in 2014

The Guardian reports the list includes at least:

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
God's War by Kameron Hurley
Fiddlehead by Cherie Priest
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
iD by Madeline Ashby
(I guess those 6 out of 33 constitute the Garundian's list. :)

The short list for guys will be released at some unspecified later date.

The Arthur C Clarke award is given annually to the best science fiction novel with a first publication in the UK.

thats a bunch of crap...men's list, woman's list...you either make the grade or ya don't...

i want a all-spooky1947 short list....nothing but works by me can be on it...after all, they are apparently dumping on me because i NEVER made the short list....

I should have recalled that this is not the "short list", it's the "submission list" of eligible works. The short list comes later.... (last year it was April 3.)

That's a step backward, not forward.

well, that's a horse of another colour...i have never had anything published, so i can't submit...but when they start makin the short list i want my own. :P

Not sure its a bad thing. When we think of best books of the year we cannot help but be affected by hype and unfortunately male authors get far more hype. For one thing a book by a male author will get more reviews and more reviews in prestigious places than an equivalent book written by a female author.

What they are doing is acknowledging that there is a problem and trying to do something about it. I am not saying I like their solution. I have not read enough about it or thought about it enough but I am glad they are trying when there is still so much within the genre that will simultaneously insist that there isnt a problem on one hand whilst they discriminate with the other.

Maybe you're right, Ben. It has a 'bad' look, but there are the factors you say.

I don't personally think the cure is much better than the disease.To be honest, that's a load of crap. In sports, it makes sense to have gender-specific leagues due to the unique physical attributes of men and women. Who in their right mind thinks separating genders for fiction awards makes any sense? It's like saying who's the fastest runner? But because the top 3 spots go to a woman, you create a second top ten list to feature them. What a lousy idea all around. Just have one list and name the winners (male and female). What's so hard about that?

Or could it be they've already decided the top spots go to their favorite male authors and if they used one list no female authors would be mentioned?

Kevis wrote: "I don't personally think the cure is much better than the disease. ... Just have one list and name the winners (male and female)."

I think eventually they will have just one list, and only one winner. But I think your reaction is why separating the submissions by gender was a bad idea, because the optics are bad.

Last year, the Clarke Award committee answered the complaint of no female authors on the short list by saying there had been no quality submissions by female authors. So, it makes sense that the committee this year tried to reach out to get more submissions from female authors. (The conditions of the Clarke Award is SF with first publication is in the UK, not British citizenship or residency. — Hence American SF authors such as Cherie Priest and Ann Leckie, and Canadians such as Margaret Atwood on this year's list. So it's hard for me in the US to know who qualifies and who was "snubbed" last year. You can see that 2012 short list here.

It doesn't necessarily follow, though, that the award committee should publish separate lists. It seems kind of condescending to me.

I'm a female civil engineer. Definitely a male dominated field, especially where I live. Imagine if someone were to say to me - Last year all the good designs were done by men, so please don't submit any designs. Hold on, soon we will have a project that will call for bids by female designers. You can have your chance then. We know that you are just as qualified and you have done excellent work in the past, but based on last year we think you need to have a chance to compete only against another women.

Not only would there be cries of outrage about the how patronizing and discriminatory that is, but I'm pretty sure the business community would kill the idea because competition has its place in helping you get the best value.

This idea is condescending. The previous two years not only had female nominees but also female winners. So for one year there aren't any female nominees and that's a cue that women should only compete against other women? Why? Because they all write at the same level of competence? That's utter nonsense.

Kevis said it well but I would go a step further - the cure is worse than the disease.

The Arthur C. Clarke Award director Tom Hunter announced earlier this week that they had a record number of 121 submissions this year (up from 82 last year), and they announce the judges (Duncan Lawie, Ian Whates, Sarah Brown, Lesley Hall, Georgie Knight.)

Here's the complete 2014 submissions list.

The short list of six titles selected by the panel of judges will be announced March 18, and the winner announced May 1.

I learned something about the Clarke award from scanning the submission list. Apparently even older books are eligible as long as they are published in the UK for the first time.

In particular, I saw Tanya Huff's Valor's Choice on the list (spelling modified to "Valour" for UK publication.) That's over a decade old. But evidently it's eligible for the Clarke award because it's only just now been published in the UK. (It's an interesting military SF of the space marines variety, a sci-fi re-imagining the battle of Rorke's Drift (from the Zulu War), with aliens instead of Zulu. I would've thought a take on Rorke's Drift would be more of interest to a British audience than an American audience.)

    2014 Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist Announced

The Arthur C Clarke award is given annually to the best science fiction novel with a first publication in the UK in the previous year.

The Arthur C. Clarke Award committee has announced the 2014 shortlist:



God's War by Kameron Hurley

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann

Nexus by Ramez Naam

The Adjacent by Christopher Priest

The Machine by James Smythe


More at Arthur C. Clarke Award website.

   
2014 Arthur C. Clarke Award Winner Announced

The Arthur C Clarke award is given annually to the best science fiction novel with a first publication in the UK in the previous year. 2014 winner is:

  Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie


Source: The Guardian online

(Hey, I get to retroactively add the book to my SF&F 2014 Awards Challenge total! :)