Clarke Award 2026 - Submissions list and my reading

 "One would think, given the scale of the challenge, that there should be emergency public meetings in every village, town and city every week to thrash out solutions. Instead, given a pervasive sense of powerlessness and futility, the most common response is what psychoanalysts call ‘disavowal’: I know perfectly well that things can’t go on this way but, because life is hard enough and I have bills to pay, I behave as if I don’t. This is the emotional substratum for what Renée Lertzman calls ‘environmental melancholia’, an undercurrent of sadness and thwarted mourning which can register in outward form as a defensive indifference."

(Seymour, Richard. The Disenchanted Earth: Reflections on Ecosocialism and Barbarism (p. 16). The Indigo Press.)

 

   I started following the Clarke in 2010. My partner had died in 2009 and I've always loved and needed reading projects, then more than ever. I'm sure it was also partly the China Mieville effect. As a socialist I relished listening to China talk about books and genre almost as much as I enjoyed his books. I was also completely smitten with Mike Harrison's Kefahuchi Tract books. At some point I discovered Adam Roberts' reviews on his blog and Infinity Plus. 

   So, I've been doing this for a while. I tend to follow other book prizes too - the Women's Prize since its inception: the Orange prize in 1996(!) as well as the Booker, International Booker and more recently the Goldmiths, the Ursula Le Guin and the Climate Prize. It's just an easy and fulfilling way to navigate my way through the reading year. Sometimes, when I'm feeling mildly reflective I wonder why I do it because the shortlists often infuriate me. WTF were the Booker judges ON last year!? So maybe I'm not particularly smart. My favourite book project last year was rereading all of Virginia Woolf though the International Booker longlist was a banger.

   Anyway, here I am, another Clarke, the 40th birthday no less and I think I've managed to read more than any other year. Thanks to Tom and his team - Tom, do you have a team or do you do it all yourself? - for always publishing the Submissions list. I always discover something new even though I try to keep informed about all the 'best' SF books, and its always interesting to analyse the list a little. What do I read to make the reading decisions that I do? The Guardian, Strange Horizons, Locus, Reactor, various podcasts and I also rely on authors that I value. So if Mike Harrison or Percvival Everett, Ali Smith or Nina Allen, James Bradley or Elif Batuman, amongst many others, recommend a book I will probably try and read it. It's a LONG list and obviously I don't get around to everything.

I've read 36 novels from the submissions list. You'll notice that I favour 'literary' over pure genre but that doesn't mean I can't love or appreciate genre just as much:

1. A Granite Silence — Nina Allan (riverrun)
2. On the Calculation of Volume I — Balle Solvej, translated by Barbara J. Haveland (Faber & Faber)
3. On the Calculation of Volume II — Balle Solvej, translated by Barbara J. Haveland (Faber & Faber)
4. Old Soul — Susan Barker (Penguin)
5. Beautyland — Marie-Helene Bertino (Vintage)
6. Landfall — James Bradley (Hodder & Stoughton)
7. Outlaw Planet — M. R. Carey (Orbit)
8. Every Version of You — Grace Chan (VERVE Books)
9. Rakesfall — Vajra Chandrasekera (Solaris)
10. The Book of Guilt — Catherine Chidgey (John Murray)
11. Red Sword — Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Honford Star)
12. A Line You Have Traced — Roisin Dunnett (Magpie)
13. Metal from Heaven — August Clarke (Solaris)
14. Helm — Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)
15. Sleeper Beach — Nick Harkaway (Corsair)
16. Under the Eye of the Big Bird — Hiromi Kawakami translated by Asa Yoneda (Granta Books)
17. The Dream Hotel — Laila Lalami (Bloomsbury Circus)
18. City of All Seasons — Oliver K. Langmead and Aliya Whiteley (Titan Books)
19. Some Body Like Me — Lucy Lapinska (Gollancz)
20. Vanishing World — Sayaka Murata translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori(Granta Books)
21. Symbiote — Michael Nayak (Angry Robot)
22. Slow Gods — Claire North (Orbit)
23. Esperance — Adam Oyebanji (Arcadia)
24. Luminous — Sylvia Park (Magpie)
25. The Expansion Project — Ben Pester (Granta Books)
26. Big Time — Jordan Prosser (Dead Ink)
27. There is No Antimemetics Division — qntm (Del Rey)
28. A Thousand Blues — Cheon Seon-ran, translated Chi-Young Kim (Doubleday)
29. Blob: A Love Story — Maggie Su (Sceptre)
30. When There Are Wolves Again — E. J. Swift (Arcadia)
31. Shroud — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)
32. The Book of Records — Madeleine Thien (Granta Books)
33. Aerth — Deborah Tomkins (Weatherglass Books)
34. The Salt Oracle — Lorraine Wilson (Solaris)
35. Basilisk — Matt Wixey (Titan Books)
36. Sunbirth — An Yu (Harvill, Vintage) 

 That doesn't tell the whole story though as I also prioritised books that I thought might be on the submissions list* (though I'm not including fantasy, horror and short story collections that have been part of the wider 2025 genre conversation):

1. The Unworthy (translated by Sarah Moses) - Augustina Bazterrica
2. Moderation - Elaine Castillo
3. Circular Motion - Alex Foster
4. The Clinking - Greenhill, Susie
5. The Place of Shells - Ishizawa, Mai (translated by Polly Barton)
6. Awake in the Floating City - Susanna Kwan
7. Sea Now - Eva Meijer (translated by Anne Thomson Melo)
8. Sympathy Tower Tokyo - Rie Qudan (translated by Jesse Kirkwood)
9. The Compound - Aisling Rawle
10. The Thinning - Inga Simpson
11. Endling - Maria Reva
12. Saraswati - Gurnak Johal 

   Finally there are books that I might read when I can get them cheap(er) or from the library: Kitasei, McKewan, Naylor, Okarafor, Reynolds, Russell and Ryman. Fellman's Notes From a Regicide would have my been my last book before writing this (so it can wait a little longer) and I like to read cold books in the winter so Ice is on ice until December. I will read Archipelago of the Sun too but I've only read the first in the trilogy.

   And so to some brief thoughts, though trying to do justice to such an amazing array of books feels a little foolish. This is clearly a year with a lot of exceptional books, more so because some of them were published elsewhere before they were published in the UK. You'll be glad to know I enjoyed most of them! Of the 48 books I've listed I'd include considerably more than a shortlist six if I had to list my favourite books of 2025. Even then there are books I expected to be good, and are good - Shroud, Aerth, City of All Seasons, Under the Eye of the Big Bird - that I might have included in my shortlist deliberations any other year. There are also books that perhaps haven't had the hype or critical discussion of others - Every Version of You, A Line You Have Traced, The Unworthy, Awake in the Sleeping City, The Thinning - that surprised me in all the best ways. I'm a bit sad that Sea Now, Sympathy Tower Tokyo and The Clinking were not submitted, or allowed, because they are great in really interesting ways.

   What then of SF? Some of my favourite books here have speculative elements but describing them as SF...? At this stage I know readers who have been thinking about genre and SF all their lives will want to intervene but I am going to disqualify several of my favourite books from my shortlist. If they make THE shortlist I will have no complaints. Old Soul - HOW did it not get on last year's Women's Prize longlist - is horror. It is finally on a shortlist (the Shirley Jackson) but I am perplexed that this has not engaged more critical discussion. Metal From Heaven is fantasy, even if the final section maybe, just about, gets into SF territory? It is also like Slow Gods (spoiler - in my shortlist) a joyfully furious book. I was reading it at the same time as I was rereading Lucy Caldwell's short stories and one of this year's International Booker shortlistees: I was genuinely overcome with fiction's disparate and wondrous possibilities. Also, it made me think of my favourite angry books and especially Julia Armfield's Private Rites. A Granite Silence is now my favourite Nina Allan book, and in my Top 3 of 2025, along with The Book of Records and Han Kang's We Do Not Part, if you must know, but does that particular cylindrical object do enough to give it a SF curve? And since I've already mentioned it I am also disqualifying Thien's masterpiece and Sarah Hall's glorious Helm. I'm not denying the speculative elements in these books of course and really I'd have to reread them with genre at the forefront of my thoughts to take part in the discussion properly.

With those decisions made, if barely justified, it becomes a lot easier to choose my shortlist:

• On the Calculation of Volume (I don't mind which one, and yes, maybe I am on dodgy ground with reference to my disqualifications of Allan, Hall and Thien? I don't think so it but maybe...)
• Slow Gods - there's an interview with North where they are slightly self deprecating about the obvious anti-capitalist thrust of the text but a) they don't need to be - it is full of righteous anger and that is fine, and b) if you want to read a book because it contains a lot of beautiful, old-fashioned, thought-provoking wisdom this is your book. If you want a text that helps you understand your perilous (lack of) connection to the world this is your book. I could go on.
• A Thousand Blues - like Beautyland this uses a familiar SF trope and makes it exceptional: tender, funny and wise. The overlapping structure and different points of view are delivered with delicious skill and simplicity. A minor, low key thing of wonder. Also, though this and Inga Simpson's The Thinning are not sold as YA you should definitely give them to a teenage reader in your life.
• Beautyland - 💗
• Luminous - I appreciated this for various reasons but I think when I read it again I'm hoping to love it even more. It made me feel in weird ways that I don't fully I understand. It felt mysterious: capacious and uncanny. Really interested to delve into it more.
• Rakesfall - Part of the fun of reading is constantly assessing and reassessing what it is I value about literature. In terms of theory I've always loved Macherey, Bahktin, Eagleton and Belsey and my gateway into 'serious literature' was through Fowles, Auster, Morrison and Winterson: polyphonic, playful, interrogative texts are always going to beguile me. Also, I feel like I'm in a constantly shifting battle with reality. Cognitive dissonance, alienation, even dissociation, are the defining aspects of my identity. Am I living in the same world as everyone else?  Here, I'll refer you back to Richard Seymour at the top of the page not because I've succumbed to defensive indifference but because I'm filled with exasperation and rage. I'm constantly reminded of a detail in Ken Macloed's Beyond The Hallowed Sky: "the iron had come into his soul, and − as the Rising a few years later had amply demonstrated − the souls of millions like him: we have to end this, whatever it takes." That's right reader, it will take a nuclear war before sections of humanity get organised and fight back. And that honestly feels like where we are at.
     All the books I've mentioned so far made me feel good things, often strong emotions, but also an identification with my alienation, that I could, with reflection, identify. Part of me, obviously is resistant and doubtful of that, of being pacified. Anyway, Rakesfall might be the most interestingly disruptive, interrogative text in contention: a novel that provides gnarly nourishment for my questioning, cynical, angry brain whilst retaining a deep sense of wonder and yes, beauty. 

     One last book I want to celebrate is Outlaw Planet. In Elaine Castillo's Moderation (read it!) the main character has cause to cause to announce: "Spiritually speaking, I'm silent generation" (244). Well I'm of the Western and Musical generation and Carey's book is basically a homage to The Outlaw Josey Wales (and I suspect 2000AD's Rogue Trooper). It is written with skill, passion and love - the voice and tone(!) - and I absolutely adored it.

   Now interesting books that didn't work for me. First, The Expansion Project: this a slippery absurdist (or surrealist - listen to a Pester interview) text about alienation - perfect for me? - but I couldn't connect with it at all, either emotionally or intellectually. I certainly didn't find it funny. When I struggle with clever books I tend to think the problem is me - that I'm not clever enough or sensitive enough or I haven't read relevant key texts - so I tend to search out interviews, essays and reviews that can offer me a way in. This did not help with The Expansion Project at all. Nor did it help with Red Sword, a book I've read twice and appreciate considerably more - but I remain unconvinced. 

   A few disappointments. Most of these 48 books are not very good at writing about politics. It's much easier to love books that try to slide around the edges of politics, hide politics or ignore politics. Some fascinating books are let down by their political imagination. I'd include Vanishing World, which up until Part 3 is full of productive contradictions; Big Time, heavily influenced by Vonnegut, manages to pull off the most awful main character with some sparkling writing but its Nationalist Eastern Australia is all over the place. I read The Compound because it came first in the GoodReads SF poll of 2025. It tries to do a difficult thing - convince with a satire about reality TV that doesn't look down on its characters. The first half is a decent attempt but the second half is just plot.I enjoyed There is No Antimemetics Division, it's ingenious and fun. It's just a bit pompous. I kept thinking about the tone of The X Files which could be pompous, but often in a funny way. Quinn is just too much Stella Rimington, or Blaise Metreweli, when I wanted her to be more Emma Peel (or Randall and Hopkirk). Also the bits, where I think we might be expected to feel something are wafer thin. Finally, a complaint about author blurbs. According to a quote on the cover of Esperance it is a 'tour de force'. I appreciate that is already a cliche and kind of silly but never did a novel deserve it less. It is an afternoon's entertaining diversion - I know, patronising - that features a white cop learning not to be racist anymore because of his confrontation with slavery: #profound.

  There were only two books that made me so angry and frustrated that I would have happily dnr'd them. That those two are widely considered by the SF book community to be two of the best books of the year has weirdly, despite all this reading effort, left me feeling more distanced from that community than ever before. I'm putting my thoughts about When There Are Wolves Again and a few words about Circular Motion here so that you can choose to ignore them if you wish. 

   The books that I haven't mentioned I enjoyed a lot too btw. And that's it, a bit rushed as usual. I'm looking forward to the shortlist and, whatever it contains, I'm looking forward to some rereading that I'm going to do alongside some books of criticism, which I don't do enough of. Adieu and happy reading.

 

*There is no veiled criticism of Tom here, I know he is in dialogue with publishers and works hard to get the widest range of books submitted.