{"id":7685,"date":"2017-08-02T09:27:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T08:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=7685"},"modified":"2017-08-02T09:27:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T08:27:32","slug":"arthur-c-clarke-award-and-the-winner-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2017\/08\/02\/arthur-c-clarke-award-and-the-winner-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur C. Clarke Award: and the winner is\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2017\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.clarkeaward.com\/\">Arthur C. Clarke Award<\/a>\u00a0for science fiction has just been awarded to Colson Whitehead\u2019s <em>The Underground Railroad<\/em> (Random House, 2016), a novel set in pre-Civil War America. The novel concerns the plight of an escaped slave, Cora, who travels America on a fictional underground rail network.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/complit\/staff\/march-russell.html\">Dr Paul March-Russell<\/a>, Specialist Associate Lecturer in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/complit\/index.html\">Department of Comparative Literature<\/a>\u00a0and editor of\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sf-foundation.org\/publications\/index.html\">Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>was on the panel of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/complit\/news\/index.html?view=6458\">judges for the award<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A considerable number of titles were under consideration for the award. \u2018For me and the other judges, this was the conclusion to a process that had started almost a year earlier. In that time, we had read 86 novels, whittling that number down to a shortlist of six, and then the eventual winner,\u2019 explained Paul. \u2018All the judges developed their own criteria, but for me, I was looking to be surprised, to be disturbed from my comfort zone. That, after all, is what great science fiction &#8211;\u00a0and great science fiction literature &#8211;\u00a0does.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Paul praised the winning title. \u2018The shortlist was generally regarded as one of the strongest in recent times, and <em>The Underground Railroad<\/em>, having already won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, has been warmly appreciated as the winner. It has all the makings of a modern classic, not unlike the first book to win the Clarke Award in 1987, Margaret Atwood\u2019s <em>The<\/em> <em>Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I\u2019ve also received the welcome to next year\u2019s judging panel &#8211;\u00a0Clarke Award judges are appointed on a two-year basis &#8211;\u00a0so my office colleagues, you have been warned!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Further details of the Arthur C. Clarke Award are available at:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.clarkeaward.com\/\">www.clarkeaward.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 2017\u00a0Arthur C. Clarke Award\u00a0for science fiction has just been awarded to Colson Whitehead\u2019s The Underground Railroad (Random House, 2016), a novel set in pre-Civil &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2017\/08\/02\/arthur-c-clarke-award-and-the-winner-is\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2458,"featured_media":6476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18583,124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7686,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685\/revisions\/7686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}