Big Dumb Object (via SMS) has the skinny on this year’s prestigious British Science Fiction Association awards winners from a little earlier this evening at Easter Con; there was (as there normally is) some excellent authors and books competing for the Best Novel gong but the award went to Ken MacLeod for the quite brilliant Night Sessions. I’ll admit a complete bias here – I’ve known Ken for years and read his books even longer and consider him to be one of our best writers of mature, thought-provoking science fiction, so I am especially delighted to see him win.
(cover to Ken MacLeod’s Night Sessions, published by Orbit)
Night Sessions, set mostly in a very near future Scotland, combines science fiction with very contemporary concerns (terrorism, religious beliefs fuelling acts of war and terror) told through a police procedural narrative (allowing Ken to induldge in something many fellow Scottish scribes have enjoyed with great success, the Edinburgh-set detective novel) delivering a story that is both thoughtful, gripping and intelligent, which is why Night Sessions was one of my Best of the Year picks. Ted Chiang’s Exhalation won the Best Short Fiction award, the highly respected Farah Mendlesohn got the Best Non Fiction and Andy Bigwood got the Best Artwork award for Cover of Subterfuge.
April 12th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Just to be clear (because it may not have been from my post) I got the news from Science Fiction Awards Watch (http://www.sfawardswatch.com/?p=1790) who got it from Farah via text. Just one step behind the news…!