The complete judges’ reading list for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2025
Every year, before we reveal the official Clarke Award shortlist, we like to take a moment to look over the entire field of submissions that our judges received, reviewed, and debated.
This year our judges received 112 eligible submissions from 49 UK publishing imprints and independent authors.
If you’re interested in how this compares to previous years, you can see past lists and analysis here: clarkeaward.medium.com
The TLDR though is this is pretty much a Goldilocks Zone year. Not the highest ever numbers received, but not worryingly low, and more on par with where we’ve landed in terms of recent submissions history for both books received and publishers entering.
A caveat as always about our terminology: this is a simple list of submissions of eligible books received, not a ‘long-list’ or other form of juried selection, but simply those books sent to our judges for them to consider as potential future Arthur C. Clarke science fiction book of the year winners.
The Clarke Award submissions lists is just one lens among many for viewing the current state of the field for science fiction literature in all its myriad forms. Mileages vary, definitions change, and new modes emerge, and we rely as always on the experience and insight of our judging panel for navigating the different definitions of our genre as they seek their final shortlist six.
I want to wish a Monolith-sized thank you to all our judges for taking on the challenge for us! The following TBR pile is what has kept them busy these past months…
Tom Hunter, Award Director
THE COMPLETE SUBMISSIONS LIST FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD SCIENCE FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
Her Gilded Voice — K.C. Aegis (Elsewhen)
The Past Master — Patience Agbabi (Canongate)
The Cosmic Caretaker — Ange Anderson (Independent)
Private Rites — Julia Armfield (4th Estate)
World Walkers — Neal Asher (Tor UK)
Mal Goes to War — Edward Ashton (Solaris)
The Last Gifts of the Universe — Riley August (Del Rey)
The Book Lovers — Steve Aylett (Snowbooks)
Crypt of the Moon Spider — Nathan Ballingrud (Titan Books)
Fortress Sol — Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
The Ministry of Time — Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre)
The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands — Sarah Brooks (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
The Seventh Spell — Davis Bunn (Severn House)
Deep Black — Miles Cameron (Gollancz)
The Doomed Earth: In Our Stars — Jack Campbell (Titan Books)
Echo of Worlds — M.R. Carey (Orbit)
A Letter to the Luminous Deep — Sylvie Cathrall (Orbit)
William — Mason Coile (Baskerville)
The Mercy of Gods — James S.A. Corey (Orbit)
Hey, Zoey — Sarah Crossan (Bloomsbury Circus)
The Headland — Abi Curtis (Gold SF)
Blacklight Born — Alexander Darwin (Orbit)
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over — Anne de Marcken (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Birdwatching at the End of the World — G.W. Dexter (NewCon Press)
Briefly Very Beautiful — Roz Dineen (Bloomsbury Circus)
Apostles of Mercy — Linday Ellis (Titan Books)
You Dreamed of Empires — Álvaro Enrigue (Harvill Secker)
Lady Eve’s Last Con — Rebecca Fraimow (Solaris)
Bonding — Mariel Franklin (Picador)
Dark Shepherd — Fred Gambino (NewCon Press)
Indigo Starling — Dundas Glass (Cosmic Egg Books)
Hagstone — Sinéad Gleeson (4th Estate)
The Husbands — Holly Gramazio (Chatto & Windus)
Extremophile — Ian Green (Ad Astra)
Annie Bot — Sierra Greer (The Borough Press)
Fight Me — Austin Grossman (Michael Joseph)
The Life Impossible — Matt Haig (Canongate)
The Edge of Solitude — Katie Hale (Canongate)
Jumpnauts — Hao Jingfang (Ad Astra)
Heat: “Beyond Mindslip” — Tony Harmsworth (Harmsworth Press)
Toxxic — Jane Hennigan (Angry Robot)
Key Lime Sky — Al Hess, (Angry Robot)
Ninth Life — Stark Holborn (Titan Books)
Lacuna — Erin Hosfield (Elsewhen Press)
The Other Valley — Scott Alexander Howard (Atlantic Books)
Toward Eternity — Anton Hur (HarperVia)
The Mark — Fríða Ísberg (Faber & Faber)
Worlds Aligned : Worlds Apart 2 — Terry Jackman (Elsewhen Press)
On Vicious Worlds — Bethany Jacobs (Orbit)
The Principle of Moments — Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson (Gollancz)
The Collapsing Wave — Doug Johnstone (Orenda Books)
Real Americans — Rachel Khong (Hutchinson Heinemann)
The Stardust Grail — Yume Kitasei (HarperVoyager)
Creation Lake — Rachel Kushner (Jonathan Cape)
Interstellar MegaChef — Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Solaris)
A Better World — Sarah Langan (Titan Books)
Calypso — Oliver K. Langmead (Titan Books)
The Book of Love — Kelly Link (Ad Astra)
Beyond the Light Horizon — Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
The Family Experiment — John Marrs (MacMillan)
The Wilding — Ian McDonald (Gollancz)
Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind — Molly McGhee (4th Estate)
The Glass Woman — Alice McIlroy — (Datura Books)
The Watermark — Sam Mills (Granta)
The Siege of Burning Grass — Premee Mohamed (Solaris)
The Great When — Alan Moore (Bloomsbury)
Ghost of the Neon God — T.R. Napper (Titan Books)
The Escher Man — T.R. Napper (Titan Books)
The Dream Traveller: Dark Rising — John Nassari (Pitstone Publishing)
Gogmagog — Jeff Noon & Steve Beard (Angry Robot)
In Universes — Emet North (Hutchinson Heinemann)
The Bound Worlds — Megan E. O’Keefe (Orbit)
A Truth Beyond Full — Rosie Oliver (Elsewhen Press)
I’m Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom — Jason Pargin (Titan Books)
Hum — Helen Phillips (Atlantic Books)
Past Crimes — Jason Pinter (Severn House)
Tomorrow’s Children — Daniel Polansky (Angry Robot)
This Is How You Remember It — Catherine Prasifka (Canongate)
The Knife and the Serpent — Tim Pratt (Angry Robot)
The Mars House — Natasha Pulley (Gollancz)
Darkome — Hannu Rajaniemi (Gollancz)
The Unrelenting Earth — Kritika H. Rao (Titan Books)
The Book of Elsewhere — Keanu Reeves and China Miéville (Del Rey)
Machine Vendetta — Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
The Final Orchard — CJ Rivera (Angry Robot)
Lake of Darkness — Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
The Consciousness Company — M.N. Rosen (Alfebella Publishing)
Any Human Power — Manda Scott (September Publishing)
Dakini Atoll — Nikhil Singh (Luna Press)
Gliff — Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
Jubilee — Stephen K. Stanford (Flame Tree Press)
Polostan — Neal Stephenson (The Borough Press)
Vigilance — Allen Stroud (Flame Tree Press)
Idolatry — Aditya Sudarshan (Flame Tree Press)
High Vaultage — Jen & Chris Sugden (Gollancz)
Welcome to Forever — Nathan Tavares (Titan Books)
Alien Clay — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK)
Service Model — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK)
The Last Murder at the End of the World — Stuart Turton (Raven)
Absolution — Jeff VanderMeer (4th Estate)
No/Mad/Land — Francesco Verso (Flame Tree Press)
Spiral — Cameron Ward (Michael Joseph)
New Adventures of a Chinese Time Machine — Ian Watson (NewCon Press)
Revenant-X — David Wellington (Orbit)
Ardent Violet and the Infinite Eye — Alex White (Orbit)
Three Eight One — Aliya Whiteley (Solaris)
We Are All Ghosts in the Forest — Lorraine Wilson (Solaris)
Juice — Tim Winton (Picador)
Out of the Drowning Deep — A.C. Wise (Titan Books)
Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock — Maud Woolf (Angry Robot)
Hammajang Luck — Makana Yamamoto (Gollancz)
Heavenly Tyrant — Xiran Jay Zhao (Rock the Boat)
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2025 are:
- Dolly Garland and Gene Rowe for the British Science Fiction Association.
- Nicola Clarke and John Coxon 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.
