Namwali Serpell’s “The Old Drift” on Arthur C. Clarke Award 2020 shortlist.

Namwali Serpell‘s The Old Drift is on the shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2020 announced on June 18, 2020.

The annual Arthur C. Clarke Award is given for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year founded in 1987. The award judges are a voluntary body with members nominated by the award’s supporting organisations, currently the British Science Fiction Association, the Science Fiction Foundation and the Sci-Fi-London film festival. Some previous winners of the award, established with a generous grant given by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, have been Lauren Beukes in 2011 and Tade Thompson in 2019. Nnedi Okorafor made the shortlist in 2016.

This year’s panel of judges, Dr Andrew M. Butler, Stewart Hotston, Alasdair Stuart, Farah Mendlesohn, Chris Pak, and Rhian Drinkwater announced the shortlist on Thursday. Its Chair, Dr Andrew M. Butler noted that this year’s selection “felt as if we were actually inside an SF novel when we chose these half dozen books — it was our first virtual meeting.”

“Listening to the deliberations of our judges this year, I was reminded again of the depth of passion that can power and unite our science fiction community, and what shines through for me in the choices of this year’s panel is this sense of shared love for the sf genre,” he said.

The shortlist for 2020 is;

• The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders (Titan).
• The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley (Angry Robot).
• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (Tor).
• The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (Hogarth).
• Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Head of Zeus).
• The Last Astronaut by David Wellington (Orbit)

This year’s winner will be unveiled in September 2020, and the winning author will receive a cash prize of £2020.00, as well as an award plaque.