Chair of Judges speech from the Clarke Award ceremony 2025
Speech by Dr Andrew M. Butler, Chair of Judges, introducing the shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award science fiction book of the year, 2025.
There’s a moment in Maud Wolf’s debut novel Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock, when a character says that
“You should never be rude to inanimate objects […] it reveals how you treat those you think of as less than human. If you are rude to a computer, you will be rude to an animal. From there it is a small step to being rude to a child or rude to a waiter in a restaurant.”
I think that’s a crucial part of science fiction — we define what it is to be human by seeing how characters relate to the not-human: the alien, the clone, the robot, the AI, the computer… That’s the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe, that’s the cognitive which we bring to estrangement and the estrangement we bring to cognition, that’s the sf vibe…
Lulabelle Rock is an actress who hasn’t quite yet made it, but has had herself cloned a dozen times so she can get servants to do things that she cannot be bothered to do herself. And then, with a new movie about to be released, she makes a thirteenth clone to retire all the others.
Is this ethical? Do the clones deserve this? And will the clone Lulabelle succeed in what seems like a straightforward mission? The judges called it “Sparky, Zeitgeist-y, unexpected-y.”
They praised Angry Robot for taking chances with new writers. The novel stood out among the hundred books the judges read.
In Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot we are more or less limited to a robot’s point of view, of a companion constructed to be a perfect wife, but a wife who will learn and react in ways that please her husband. A husband who swiftly reveals himself to be a jerk. Can Annie Bot achieve true happiness and agency? Or will she be a sex machine which can do the dishes?
This is a novel about societal and individual wrongs and there’s a sense of anger running through this Stepford Wives update.
Anger is at the heart of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, the story of Charles, a robotic valet who has murdered his master. He first has to navigate the logical labyrinth of his protocols and then those of the medical and legal systems, as robots and systems have taken over the running of society. And Charles faces a real problem: how can he find a new master?
Tchaikovsky channels Christie, Kafka, Orwell, Borges, Dante and many others in what the judges saw as a new departure for the Clarke winner. This is in the tradition of Douglas Adams and John Sladek’s Roderick and great war satires such as Catch-22 and The Good Soldier Svejk. Like Roderick, Charles is more human than biological humans. The judges found Service Model laugh out loud funny.
The same is rarely true of Julia Armfield’s second novel Private Rites, which transposes a King Lear dynamic to a rainy, near future, city. When the father dies, his daughters Agnes, Isla and Irene have to deal with his legacy, as their own relationships further dissolve. The judges noted Private Rites “melds different genres to create a fusion that is more than the sum of its parts” and it depicts a world in which “everything’s getting gradually shitter”.
They need to be kind.
The climate is more erratic in Ian Green’s sf debut Extremophile. Biohacker Charlie is hired with their partner Parker to commit a heist to help ecoterrorists. The judges note that it lies in the “Intersection of climate change, identity and national identity” and it is “Gibson deep fried in solar panels”. One judge said they could “See this taking its place in a future classics list of 21st century SF.” Genetic modifications can redefine what it is to be human — and using such modifications can be the opposite of being human. Corporations sacrifice kindness for the bottom line.
There’s some dubious morality underlying the mission in Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time. Half a dozen people have been scooped out of the past and given minders, or bridges, in a near, climate-raddled London.
The unnamed British-Cambodian translator has to help Commander Graham Gore adjust from being on John Franklin’s failed mission to find the Northwest Passage to the contemporary world full of bureaucracy, the legacy of empire and, as the author puts it, cigarettes. Can Gore be reprogrammed for the twenty-first century?
But this being a time travel romance, there are timey whimey issues to fit in as well and somebody who wants to undermine the project. The judges found it full of charm with a deft sense of humour and praised its smart engagement with colonialism.
At one point, a character explains karma: “A cruel action will be repaid with cruelty, a kind one with kindness.”
And yet… I confess that the Arthur C. Clarke Award can be very cruel. We asked five judges — Nic Clarke, John Coxon, Dolly Garland, Glyn Morgan and Gene Rowe — to read over a hundred novels and reduce this to the shortlist of six we’ve just heard about.
And then, again, cruelly, we brought them all together to pick one book that will be the single winner. No joint winners, no runner up, no honourable mention, just one.
We swore them to secrecy.
We thank them for their endurance and forbearance at such cruelties and for the many acts of kindness they showed to each other.
The authors of these half dozen books have been in suspense since the announcement of the short list.
It’s probably cruel of us to delay things any further tonight, but, unfortunately, but before we can get to the announcement of the winner, I have been asked to say first that…
No, enough. Too much, even.
Please be kind.
Andrew M. Butler is a British academic who teaches film, media and cultural studies at Canterbury Christ Church University. He is a former editor of the BSFA’s magazine Vector: The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association and was membership secretary of the Science Fiction Foundation. A judge on the juries that gave the award to The Sparrow and Calcutta Chromosome, he is currently the non-voting Chair of Judges.
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