The complete judges’ reading list for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2024
The annual publication of our submissions list, the complete list of eligible books received by our judges every year, has gone from novelty to being a major part of our Clarke Award traditions.
For us award directors it is an opportunity to showcase the variety of science fiction books published across the UK in a single year, and to highlight both the challenge and the dedication required by our judging panel in parsing their collective way to a shortlist selection comprising only six titles and one ultimate winner.
This year our judges received 117 eligible titles from 50 UK publishing imprints and independent authors.
It’s common for people to look at the total number of books received as a first measure of the relative health and variety of science fiction publishing across the UK, so to be clear this is a big year. However, we also wanted to draw attention to the total number of submitting imprints, which is one of our highest ever.
You are, of course, most welcome dear readers to use this list as a means to pit your skills of prediction against our judges prior to the reveal of this year’s shortlist in May.
There is no prize for accurate prognostication, but monolith-sized bragging rights are all yours if you get it right!
That said, to our knowledge no one to date has successfully predicted all six shortlisted books in all the years we’ve published this list, and that stat includes us directors with all the advantages of our inside track…
And finally a necessary note of clarification:
The below is not a long-list, or some other form of curated or judged list, and it should not be promoted as such.
It is simply the full list of eligible titles, in alphabetical order by author surname, received by this year’s judging panel, and from which they will make their final shortlist selection of six books.
THE COMPLETE SUBMISSIONS LIST FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD SCIENCE FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
Conquest — Nina Allan (riverrun)
Chain-Gang All-Stars — Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Harvill Secker)
The Future — Naomi Alderman (4th Estate)
Promises Stronger than Darkness — Charlie Jane Anders (Titan Books)
The Artifice of Eternity — Aaron H. Arm (Cosmic Egg Books)
Thirsty Animals — Rachelle Atalla (Hodder & Stoughton)
Burrowed — Mary Baader Kaley (Angry Robot)
Secondhand Daylight — Eugen Bacon & Andrew Hook (Cosmic Egg Books)
The Strange — Nathan Ballingrud (Titan Books)
Creation Node — Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
The Sisterhood — Katherine Bradley (Simon & Schuster)
Myriad — Joshua David Bellin (Angry Robot)
Bridge — Lauren Beukes (Penguin Michael Joseph)
Ascension — Nicholas Binge (HarperVoyager)
Adrift — Lisa Brideau (Sourcebooks)
Silicone God — Victoria Brooks (Moist Books)
Evergreens — Liam Brown (Legend Press)
In the Blink of an Eye — Jo Callaghan (Simon & Schuster)
The Lost Fleet: Outlands — Implacable — Jack Campbell (Titan Books)
Infinity Gate — M. R. Carey (Orbit)
Sea Change — Gina Chung (Picador)
The End of Nightwork — Aidan Cottrell-Boyce (Granta Books)
Flux — Jinwoo Chong (Melville House)
Oh God, The Sun Goes — David Connor (Melville House)
Frontier — Grace Curtis (Hodderscape)
The Combat Codes — Alexander Darwin (Orbit)
A Fire Born of Exile — Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz)
Meru — S. B. Divya (47North)
The Lost Cause — Cory Doctorow (Head of Zeus)
Alien Agendas — Ian Douglas (HarperVoyager)
Mindbreaker — Kate Dylan (Hodder & Stoughton)
Trine — Chris Faraday (Angry Robot)
The Memory of Animals — Claire Fuller (Fig Tree)
The Gauntlet and the Broken Chain — Ian Green (Head of Zeus/ AdAstra)
Earth Retrograde — R. W. W. Greene (Angry Robot)
The Last Star — Terry Grimwood (Elsewhen Press)
The Disinformation War — S. J. Groenewegen (Goldsmiths Press)
Beautiful Shining People — Michael Grothaus (Orenda Books)
Shark Heart: A Love Story — Emily Habeck (Jo Fletcher Books)
Mothtown — Caroline Hardaker (Angry Robot)
The Forcing — Paul E. Hardisty (Orenda Books)
Titanium Noir — Nick Harkaway (Corsair)
World Running Down — Al Hess (Angry Robot)
Lamb — Matt Hill (Dead Ink Books)
The Infinite — Ada Hoffmann (Angry Robot)
Red Dust, White Snow — Pan Huiting (Fairlight Books)
The Dimensions of a Cave — Greg Jackson (Granta Books)
These Burning Stars — Bethany Jacobs (Orbit)
The Space Between Us — Doug Johnstone (Orenda Books)
In the Lives of Puppets — TJ Klune (Tor UK)
Birds of Paradise — Rudolf Kremers (Elsewhen Press)
Biography of X — Catherine Lacey (Granta Books)
The Ten Percent Thief — Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Solaris)
Translation State — Ann Leckie (Orbit)
Perilous Times — Thomas D. Lee (Orbit)
Doubleback: The Hunt — G. S. Lester (G. S. Lester)
The Death I Gave Him — Em X. Liu (Solaris)
The Blue, Beautiful World — Karen Lord (Gollancz)
Prophet — Helen Macdonald & Sin Blaché (Jonathan Cape)
Ravage: An Astonishment of Fire — MacGillivray (Bloodaxe Books)
In Ascension — Martin MacInnes (Atlantic Books)
Beyond the Reach of Earth — Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
The Ghostwriters — M. J. Maloney (Goldsmiths Press)
The Marriage Act — John Marrs (Macmillan)
Hopeland — Ian McDonald (Gollancz)
She’s a Killer — Kirsten McDougall (Gallic Books)
Our Hideous Progeny — C. E. McGill (Doubleday)
Moojag and the Lost Memories — N. E. McMorran (Spondylux Press)
Refractions — M V Melcer (Storm Publishing)
Sons of Darkness — Gourav Mohanty (Head of Zeus / AdAstra)
The 14th Storm — Daniel J Mooney (Legend Press)
The Mountain in the Sea — Ray Nayler (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)
Renegade — Miles Nelson (Elsewhen Press)
The Terraformers — Annalee Newitz (Orbit)
Julia — Sandra Newman (Granta Books)
More Perfect — Temi Oh (Simon & Schuster)
The Blighted Stars — Megan E. O’Keefe (Orbit)
Jungle House — Julianne Pachico (Serpent’s Tail)
Fractal Noise — Christopher Paolini (Tor UK)
Zoey is too Drunk for this Dystopia — Jason Pargin (Titan Books)
The Other Shore — Hoa Pham (Goldsmiths Press)
The Thick and the Lean — Chana Porter (Titan Books)
Descendant Machine — Gareth L. Powell (Titan Books)
My Brother’s Keeper — Tim Powers (Head of Zeus/AdAstra)
Airside — Christopher Priest (Gollancz)
The Surviving Sky — Kritika H. Rao (Titan Books)
Quantum Radio — A. G. Riddle (Head of Zeus / AdAstra)
The Wrath of the Blob — Dashe Roberts (Future Human)
Flight of the Eternal Emperor — James Rogers (Cosmic Egg Books)
Arch-Conspirator — Veronica Roth (Titan Books)
Red River Seven — A. J. Ryan (Orbit)
Him — Geoff Ryman (Angry Robot)
Starter Villain — John Scalzi (Tor UK)
A Day of Fallen Night — Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury)
Suborbital 7 — John Shirley (Titan Books)
The Centre — Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi (Picador)
A Second Chance for Yesterday — R. A. Sinn (Solaris)
Bird Life: a novel — Anna Smaill (Scribe Publications)
One — Eve Smith (Orenda Books)
Cahokia Jazz — Francis Spufford (Faber & Faber)
Loophole — Ian Stewart (Elsewhen Press)
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon -Wole Talabi (Gollancz)
House of Open Wounds — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Head of Zeus/AdAstra)
Some Desperate Glory — Emily Tesh (Orb it)
The Circumference of the World — Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)
Pink Slime — Fernanda Trías (Scribe Publications)
The Phoenix King — Aparna Verma (Orbit)
The Dissent — Leah Vernon (47North)
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility — Isabel Waidner (Hamish Hamilton)
Lessons in Birdwatching — Honey Watson (Angry Robot)
Paradise-1 — David Wellington (Orbit)
The Night Field -Donna Glee Williams (Jo Fletcher Books)
Girlfriend on Mars — Deborah Willis (Serpent’s Tail)
Mother Sea — Lorraine Wilson (Fairlight Books)
Bang Bang Bodhisattva — Aubrey Wood (Solaris)
Androne — Dwain Worrell (47North)
Land of Milk and Honey — C Pam Zhang (Hutchinson Heinemann)
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2024 are:
- Dolly Garland and Stark Holborn for the British Science Fiction Association.
- Nicola Clarke and Tom Dillon for the Science Fiction Foundation.
- Dr Glyn Morgan for the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival.
- Dr Andrew M. Butler represented the Arthur C. Clarke Award directors in a non-voting role as the Chair of the Judges.
The Clarke Award directors have released this submissions data as an open-source resource intended to showcase the breadth and diversity of UK science fiction literature and publishing.
This forms part of the award’s ongoing commitment to self-accountability, the positive promotion of science fiction, and supporting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across the UK publishing industry and wider science fiction community.
For the latest Clarke Award news subscribe to our newsletter here
