As noted last night, the winner of this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award is …
Song of Time by Ian R MacLeod
The Guardian’s write-ups are here and here. Obviously, I’m thrilled by the result and think it is the right decision. Congratulations to Ian MacLeod, and to PS Publishing! (From whom you should all now buy the book.)
Of course, in an ideal world, I would now like to see MacLeod find a UK (and, hey, US too, why not?) publishing deal that includes some or all of the following:
- A paperback edition of Song of Time (Preferably, much as I think PS did a great service in publishing the book, after giving the text a thorough proofread and commissioning a new cover).
- A new edition of The Summer Isles (it is really inexplicable that this book has only appeared in a small-press hardback edition in the US)
- His next novel, Wake Up and Dream
- A short fiction collection, probably pulling together the best stories from the two collections that have never been published in the UK (Voyages by Starlight — “Starship Day”, “1/72nd Scale”; Breathmoss and Other Exhalations — “New Light on the Drake Equation”, “Isobel of the Fall”) and the more recent, uncollected stories (“The Master Miller’s Tale”, “Elementals”)
Well, one thing at a time, maybe. But if nobody picks up the paperback rights to Song of Time, at least, I’ll be very disappointed, so fingers crossed on that front.
vector-bsfa.com 
Short fiction: his ‘The Camping Wainrights’, which appeared in Postscripts 17, is also very good indeed.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for a paperback edition. Which is sad as I haven’t read the book and I can’t stand hardbacks.
Adam: Even more reason for someone to do a collection — I haven’t read that one. :)
Jonathan: Well, maybe. If it doesn’t happen, I will choose to believe that it’s economics, rather than all the major UK imprints choosing to continue to be wrongheads, though. :-) (Secretly, I think MacLeod’s books would actually fit in best on Faber’s list — particularly The Summer Isles, which does seem to me very much of a piece with the sort of sf they’ve been publishing recently (Never Let Me Go/Resistance/Far North…)
Major British newspapers cover SF book awards? I’m so insanely jealous right now. In Canada, the only SF books that get covered are typically Margaret Atwood’s, and the reviewers are usually careful to make it clear that she’s, you know, better than that genre stuff.