Your 2010 Clarke Award Nominees

I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting SFnal awards news and commentary; I seem to have inadvertently gafiated (or nearly done so) while I wasn't paying attention. There were a big flurry this past weekend, so I'm running late on them.

First is the Arthur C. Clarke Award for the best Science Fiction novel of the year published in the UK; this year's nominees are:

• Spirit - Gwyneth Jones (Gollancz)
  
• The City & The City - China Miéville (Macmillan)
  
• Yellow Blue Tibia - Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
• Galileo's Dream - Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperCollins)
  
• Far North - Marcel Theroux (Faber & Faber)
  
• Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding (Gollancz)

The Clarke is a judged award, which partially explains why it has a tropism to the literary and lesser-known; this year's judges were Chris Hill and Jon Courtenay Grimwood ( for the British Science Fiction Association), Francis Spufford and Rhiannon Lassiter (for the Science Fiction Foundation) and Paul Skevington (for the science fiction news website SFCrowsnest.com).

As usual with the Clarke, it's an eclectic mix, including several books that haven't been published in the US yet (and might not make it here any time soon, if ever). I won't try to handicap it, since I've only read one of the books so far (the Mieville), and was not overly impressed by that.